Michigan’s prisons are understaffed and overcrowded On July 3, 2024, Corrections Union President Byron Osborn “sounded the alarm” announcing prisons are dangerously understaffed and unsafe, and calling on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to deploy the National Guard as a temporary solution until permanent measures can be taken. The department owns and operates 26 prison complexes, 17 [...]
Throughout the week, Michigan's lawmakers have been hard at work finalizing a state budget for next year. That budget is now complete, and it has some promising implications for people working for criminal justice reform. This budget season, Safe & Just Michigan and partner organizations throughout the state embarked on a campaign to provide much-needed [...]
View on criminal justice in Michigan It is my belief, from having initiated five requests for commutation of my sentence, that the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) parole board is invested in purposefully interfering in all requests for commutation filed by those prisoners serving a natural life sentence, e.g., a life sentence without the possibility [...]
On March 5 and 6, a team of representatives from Safe & Just Michigan and the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth visited Michigan state representatives and senators to urge them to resume action on our bills to end juvenile life without parole in Michigan. Last year, Safe & Just Michigan worked with supportive [...]
Michigan’s prison population nudged upward again for the first time in a decade, reversing a trend of rapidly falling headcounts inside prisons operated by the Michigan Department of Corrections. According to the figures recently published in the MDOC’s 2022 Statistical Report, there were 32,374 people incarcerated in Michigan prisons at the end of 2022, up [...]
NOTE: Readers are cautioned that the following letters involve themes of physical and sexual abuse. How much time is enough for rehabilitation? I have been incarcerated for 10 years. When I came to prison I was a very angry woman, had no feelings for how I treated others. I trusted no one, I felt [...]
Rethink felony murder Recently the U.S. Supreme Court and the Michigan Supreme Court have both acknowledged that life without parole sentences for juveniles who commit first-degree premeditated murder is unconstitutional, and cruel or unusual punishment. Yet, Michigan continues sentencing felony murder aider and abettors to mandatory life without parole where the defendants did not kill, [...]
This year started with a lot of promise for criminal justice reform advocates in Michigan. For the first time in 40 years, Democrats secured a hold on the governor’s desk and both chambers of the state Capitol, leading many to hope that our legislation would get favorable committee hearings and votes on the House and [...]
Thirteen years ago, Nealmetria Loper came to a reckoning in her life. After living in a Detroit neighborhood that was troubled by violence and poverty, she decided she wanted better for her own children — and other children living in the city. Loper — one of two Safe & Just Michigan Community Outreach Fellows— already knew [...]
Ceci Bordayo has many notable accomplishments in her life. She’s written and recorded “House of Secrets,” a song about her family’s secrets surrounding physical and sexual abuse, which has helped countless people come to terms with their own trauma. Her painful childhood experiences also became the genesis for “Pass the Mic,” a storytelling platform she [...]