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EVIDENCE-BASED SENTENCTING >> Productivity Credits
Campaign Brief:
Advancing Productivity Credit Legislation
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Background
In the 1990s, Michigan — along with all other states — passed a Truth in Sentencing law. At that time, the federal government conditioned grants for prison construction on states having laws requiring people convicted of violent offenses to serve at least 85 percent of their minimum sentence before qualifying for parole. Michigan already met this requirement, but passed a law requiring all people serving a term of years to serve 100 percent of their sentence before parole eligibility.
A decade later, attitudes began to change. The federal government dropped its 85 percent rule in 2001, and many states began rolling back their Truth in Sentencing policies. Some states, like Texas and Louisiana, make parole a possibility once a person has served just 25 percent of a sentence for a nonviolent offense. Here in Michigan, however, the same person would still have to serve their full minimum sentence before parole would be possible, whether they were incarcerated for writing bad checks or armed robbery.
People who are incarcerated often feel there is little incentive to acquire job skills, plan for the future or display good behavior when their hard work goes unrecognized without a credit system and their release date remains just as far away. This can create dangerous conditions for both the people who live in prisons and the people who work in them.
Vision
We can create an incentive that would address these problems by allowing incarcerated people to earn time against their sentence by completing educational, vocational or rehabilitative goals. These skills would also help incarcerated people find good jobs once they transition home. At the same time, productivity credits would create a safer living and working environment in prisons and help us tackle problems such as prison overcrowding, prison staffing shortages and the growing health care costs of incarcerated Michiganders.
