The Myths vs. What’s Actually True
What Taxpayers Are Actually Paying For
So what are Michigan taxpayers getting for $48,000 per person per year? Malnutrition. Mental distress. Emotional trauma. Family separation. And the perpetuation of conditions that research consistently shows increase, rather than reduce, recidivism.
What is rarely discussed in the “prison is a hotel” narrative is who actually absorbs the financial costs the state does not cover. It is overwhelmingly mothers and grandmothers — women who are now sole providers for children whose parents are incarcerated, who supplement inadequate commissary funds, who pay for phone calls, who cover transportation costs for visits.
They are ridiculed when they apply for financial assistance and called ungrateful when they say it is not enough. Meanwhile, politicians who insist they care about children continue to incarcerate parents, eliminate family income, and refuse the diversion programs that could have addressed the underlying issue without tearing a family apart. The cycle benefits the people in power. Everyone else pays for it.
Why This Myth Persists: The Political Economy of Incarceration
This narrative does not survive on ignorance alone. It is actively maintained because it serves specific interests. Judges and prosecutors build careers on high conviction rates and tough sentencing. Prison industry contractors benefit from population. Politicians use fear-based rhetoric to stay in office without having to solve anything. Very few of them have ever visited a prison. Fewer still have spoken to the families of incarcerated people. They do not need to, because the narrative runs on its own momentum.
It is quicker to call someone “a danger to society” than to engage with criminological theory. It is easier to repeat that prison is comfortable than to visit one. It is politically safer to support maximum sentencing than to advocate for diversion. These choices are not made from ignorance — they are made from convenience. The people making them know exactly what they are doing. The people who do not know are the ones being taxed to pay for it.
The Public Perception Problem
The myth is not just harmful to incarcerated people. It shapes jury verdicts, sentencing decisions, and public policy in ways that go far beyond any individual case. Mark Godsey, a former prosecutor and author of Blind Injustice, quotes criminal justice scholar Professor Keith Findley on exactly how this plays out:
“The presumption of innocence is under constant assault from jurors’ natural assumption that if someone is arrested and charged with a crime, he or she must have done something wrong. It is also vulnerable to the media frenzy around high profile cases, the fear-driven politics of crime, and the highly punitive nature of our culture and the innate cognitive processes that produce tunnel vision and confirmation bias.”
Godsey, M. (2017). Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions. University of California Press.
Research bears this out. Studies show mock jurors predict a 50 percent chance of voting to convict before hearing any evidence. While simulated jurors initially assign low probabilities of guilt, they abandon the presumption of innocence quickly as prosecution evidence is introduced. The public narrative is being driven by people in places of power who have everything to win and nothing to lose — while ordinary people are punished and taxed.
We Can Fix This — But Only If We Stop Accepting the Lie
Diversion programs are more cost-effective than incarceration. Treatment addresses the underlying issues that drive recidivism. Restorative justice models have documented success. None of this is secret. The research is not ambiguous. The reason these approaches are not more widely adopted is not lack of evidence — it is lack of political will from people who benefit from the current system.
Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before this system touches your life too.
