After decades of over sentencing and mass incarceration plaguing Michiganians, community members are taking the problem of Michigan’s criminal legal system back into their hands, the way it always should have been. At this point the state of Michigan’s Department of Corrections is so far behind that of so many states in the process of transitioning from being over punitive to rehabilitative that community members are fed up with elected officials dragging their feet. With the recent election of Governor Gretchen Whitmer many residents saw hope for Michigan’s criminal legal system, assuming that perhaps she might be more accessible to community stakeholders.
Governor’s Task Force Falls Short, Community Organizers Fill the Gap
Sadly, we’ve been disappointed. With the development of the Governor’s task force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, hope was restored to some while others saw that the executive order fell short. We expected that this would be a coalition of stakeholders with the authority to implement change, but with the recent update from the task force being that they are in the process of searching for ideas, citizens are outraged. How is it that the governor could create a task force to think of ideas when countless ideas already exist within the community? We are far beyond ideas, at this point we need implementation. The governor’s failure to do so places the responsibility into our hands.
This past week Michigan Liberation, a grassroots, impacted-led non-profit organization, held a statewide eight-issue agenda launch event in celebration of the completion of their community-led statewide agenda to “liberate Michigan” through the transformation our criminal legal system. The agenda goes beyond simply asking for reforms and makes concrete long-overdue demands under the following themes: Freedom for Our Children to Thrive, Community-Determined Public Safety, Care Not Criminalization, Innocent until Proven Otherwise, Sentencing and the Right to Redemption, End Prison Slavery, Rebuilding Life After Incarceration, and Justice for Wrongful Convictions within the Vision for a Liberated Michigan.
Michigan Liberation’s staff have been working for over a year to identify the holes in our criminal justice system and opened up their doors to the public in order to collaborate with as many community members as possible in developing solutions. Michigan Liberation’s agenda builders have successfully developed on a wholistic plan attacking all areas of Corrections from policing and juvenile detention to prison conditions and re-entry while Gretchen Whitmer has spent the entire year focused solely on one aspect of our criminal legal system, pretrial sentencing and jail.
Michigan Liberation Prepares for 2020 Prosecutor Election
The coalition being led by Michigan Liberation has prepared their agenda in time to establish a statewide campaign for the upcoming prosecutors election in 2020. We’ve identified the tremendous amount of unchecked power that a single prosecutor holds over their county to over sentence, plea-bargain, or drop charges on individuals. We’ve realized that our current prosecutors in Wayne, Washtenaw and Oakland counties especially have done little to nothing to serve our interests, and have actually worked against the interests of the community to decarcerate for decades. Looking at the state of our prisons it’s obvious that our County prosecutors are over using criminal courts and over sentencing thousands of individuals. Over the past couple years legislation has tried to do its part in rectifying these issues with the passing of Raise the Age and the release of dozens of juvenile lifers, elected officials in Congress are doing what they can to rectify the deep harms that prosecutors have incited, but that simply isn’t enough. We cannot depend on legislation to be passed in order to rectify our wrongs we must be proactive in working with elected officials who have community interests at heart and elect candidates that will serve those interest from the beginning. This will be more effective in the long term rather than trying to clean up a mess of prosecutors that aren’t committed to their community.
If you haven’t yet, it is not at all too late to join Michigan Liberation in their campaign for a liberated Michigan. We need your support for not only raising awareness about what the agenda demands are but by also inquiring of candidates on their positions on these demands as we move into the election season. We also need your support for the individual campaigns within the agenda such as the Good-Time campaign for which canvassing help will be needed after the new year along with the call to end life without the possibility of parole or natural life sentences. It’s essential that if you want to see any of these demands come into fruition in Michigan, that you be a part of making it happen. We are living in a historic moment with the rare opportunity for a corrections department overhaul. We can transform Michigan from being the least of the states with destitute, overcrowded prisons that have little to no programming to being a leader in our nation. We have that chance and the agenda has been set so now as we look as we call on our elected officials will look to our people to uphold the responsibility of holding our elected officials accountable.
