The bipartisan bill proposes sentence-reduction credits for individuals who participate and successfully complete training and vocational programs. On its surface, the bill appears to balance the state’s requirement for a pound of flesh along with rehabilitative measures to make incarcerated-individuals successful upon release.
Since 1998, Michigan has been one of two states that provide no ability to earn time off a sentence. Not disciplinary credits, not productivity credits, and definitely no “good time.”
Michigan is an incarceration-advocate heaven.
Even with Michigan DOC facing significant staffing shortages, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Governor Gretchen Whitmer – both former Prosecutors – are not truly champions of prison reform, expressing distaste for Good Time Credit bills in the past. Both are perfectly happy with the state spending $2.1 billion per year to house 32,000 incarcerated persons, even those who are non-violent or who have aged out of crime entirely.
Even if that person has just ONE family member helping them, that’s a minimum of 32,000 victims of collateral consequences.
32,000 people paying for the outrageous phone and video visit costs they allow to slowly bankrupt families.
32,000 people paying for garbage commissary food so their loved ones don’t waste away because the state won’t properly feed them.
32,000 people playing “Mother Heidi Washington May I?” to see their loved ones who have essentially been taken hostage by the state.
32,000 households with one less parent, or no parent at all.
32,000 households traumatized by their unending cycles of mass incarceration.
64,000 people who will tell you that Prison DOES NOT WORK. It’s a political shell game where the people stuck in the system pay the price.
Clearly, data and reform are not important to them; they’re politicians, not academics. It’s going to take voters respectfully speaking up to get them to listen to evidence-based reason instead of their politically-motivated baser instincts.
Make Your Voice Heard
I am uncertain how this will move forward. However, I encourage families to write your lawmakers and urge their support.
Find your Michigan Senator here.
Read the article here.
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