Neither side can win. Neither Democrats nor Republicans can advance Michigan without working with the other side. I keep saying that to anyone who will listen. The state prison system is the clearest example I can cite.
The state is on the edge of another budget train wreck. A loosely affiliated coalition of reform-minded groups is fixed on the state Corrections Department as the best possible way to save money.
Look for possible movement as early as the end of the month as the Council of State Governments is working on bipartisan recommendations to deal with Michigan’s sentencing and prison operations policies that continue to overshadow many other competing interests (education, local government, tax reform, etc.) for shrinking state tax dollars.
Here’s a summary of the positions of four key stakeholders who will need to find common ground to make reform a reality:
CITIZENS RESEARCH COUNCIL — TOUGH-ON-CRIME PHILOSOPHY IS INEFFECTIVE AND TOO EXPENSIVE: This group of independent budget researchers is alarmed that Michigan’s prison population has grown 538 percent and corrections spending has grown more than 5,000 percent in the last 34 years. One-third of all state employees work in in the prison system — a workforce that has grown seven times larger in the past three decades. Michigan incarcerates more people and keeps them in prison longer than the rest of the Great Lakes region. Michigan spends 61 percent more per capita on prisons than neighboring states. Salaries in the Michigan prison system are 20 percent higher than those in neighboring states.
BUSINESS GROUPS WANT REFORMS IN SENTENCING AND OPERATIONS: Detroit Renaissance has called for reducing the state prison population and privatizing things like food service to save more than $400 million a year. The Detroit Regional Chamber also calls for sentencing reforms and various forms of privatization to save hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
GRANHOLM ADMINISTRATION — SENTENCING REFORM IS BEST OPTION: Corrections officials quibble with some of the Citizen Research Council’s numbers on where Michigan ranks on some prison spending. But the department has not yet issued detailed calculations that would rebut CRC’s findings. And, Corrections department leadership and the governor agree with CRC that lighter sentencing and other methods to reduce recidivism could save hundreds of millions of dollars without threatening public safety. The Corrections Department is resistant to ideas to cut employee pay or close more prisons and take away jobs in communities where prisons are located. Officials have not been particularly quick to jump on the business bandwagon for privatization and point to many reforms already made that have, as of this week, brought the prison population down to 49,600 inmates — the lowest level in several years.
SENATE REPUBLICANS — OPERATIONS REFORM IS BEST OPTION: No sentencing reform is possible without the agreement of the Republican-controlled Senate. Senators Alan Cropsey and Wayne Kuipers lead the Senate’s policy positions on corrections. In May, they issued a report dismissing sentencing reform out of hand as a threat to public safety. The senators also point out their own litany of troubling findings. Prison guard overtime has more than doubled in the past five years. Prisoner health care costs are up more than 40 percent over the same time period — in part because of federal court orders that provide for better care of prisoners than many law-abiding citizens can obtain. Taxpayers spend $250 million a year on prisoner health care. Mental health services cost $1,660 per prisoner per year in Michigan compared to $662 in Minnesota or $415 in Texas. Telemedicine, teleconferencing, reduced spending on transportation, and privatization of various prison operations are the senators’ reform approaches.
12 Comments
Too bad we didn’t see the light politically on the obvious issue of prison costs while our state economy had jobs to offer people trying to get out of the criminal justice system. Talk about short-sighted, and even, it seems to me, un-Christian!
We have paid a very high a cost, for a long, long time … to fund prisons that are schools for crime, incarcerating young people, often there for drug crimes, so they learn more about criminal pursuits from more experienced convists.
Talking tough on crime has been so costly in dollars and also in short-shrifting our children’s educations. Additional fallout has been the decline of older neighborhoods, ever more sprawl and dependence on foreign oil, and the re-segregation of our schools.
The self-righteousness and supposed protection of our misguided war on crime came at a very high cost indeed.
Something new needs to be done with prisons. Michigan spends more money on them then it does on schools. This is very sad. Prisoners get cable and air conditioning while our schools are getting shut down. This needs to change. Prisoners do not need the comforts of cable, internet, air conditioning, and the like; not while the children go without proper education in well-run schools.
As a Michigan citizen I ask you to accept this written appeal for parole for Michael Jerry Beebe # 240491, currently serving a long sentence of imprisonment with possibility of parole for his 1999 conviction of prison escape. Michael did not escape from prison another inmate did and the FBI have investigated thoroughly and have found Michael innocent. Michigan Department of Correction is still holding him his release date is 2045; he has already been incarcerated for more than 12 years. Michael is currently being held at Standish Maximum Corrections Facility.
Whatever the reasons and mechanics by which our legislature has managed to enact a law holding someone responsible for crimes far greater than those actually committed; the citizens of this state never intended that for a crime which he had no involvement in and a non-violent inmate. Although that premise stands on its own, I invite you to review the details of this case, trial, conviction and sentence and learn why so many people are so outraged by the magnitude of this injustice.
I believe, as do most Michiganders, that crime must be deterred and prosecuted, that convictions must be fair and that punishments must be equitable. Why is he at a Maximum Security Prison level 5 the possibility of parole for a man convicted of a crime he did not commit using a legal fiction is neither fair nor equitable. Michael’s appeals thus far have been denied, presumably because the parole must follow the law without regard to its grossly unjust unintended consequences. I ask that you please correct this injustice by helping grant Michael Beebe’s Parole. So Michael can come home and work to his wife and kids
Megan, I’m not sure which prison you have been to where inmates get air conditioning and internet, but they don’t in any prison in Michigan. Please, before you begin talking about things you know nothing about, do some research: visit a prison in Michigan and see how inmates really live in their 8-man cubes meant for four. How they run out of food on a daily basis. How inmates can not even move without running into someone. How store prices are being raised up to 80% with a 10% surcharge (one bag of Ramen Noodles costs almost $2, while we can get it for 20 cents).
I do agree with your statement about education because I am a teacher and I pay for many supplies out of my own pocket so my students can succeed. But the money in the budget for the MDOC does not need to come from the inmates!
I would rather see the prison issue viewed from the perspective of improving the safety of communities and finding ways to assure that prisoners are reformed. Are there states that are successfully rehabilitating prisoners? Are there states that have low recividism rates based on proven programs. Saving money at the expense of community safety is no saving at all.
I continually hear about how we cost more than such other states in all these categories. As well, we are less efficient or we pay more to employees etc, or we give more benefits, or ours just cost more.
I gladly vote to review other states’ correction programs and use what costs the least. Can we learn from more successful or at least less costly programs?
If we have so much Overtime being worked by our existing officers, does that mean our staffing is too low? can we start new hirees for lower pay? can we get buyouts of long time higher paid officers? can we contract them out to train new recruits?
Can we review BS cases like the one listed above by “Shannon”? or that woman who was living the past 30 yrs as an upstanding citizen with no danger to society being extradited back to Michigan and being held for sentencing?
When are we going to have a “Correctional Facility program” intead of a “Revenge-Incarceration Program” in michigan?
If the point to jail is to do two things – make the convict pay a penalty for crime, but also “Correct” them through whatever means necessary, then we are failing in #2, the most important item. Because when convicts get released we need them to Want to try to fit into mainstream society and never commit crimes again.
It looks like for hardened criminals, our prisons are NOT deterrants for crime, and infact are part of a system for them. In the case of lightweights making a mistake, that never want to do it again, we are Putting the Hammer down and pounding them with scarce resources as if they were the worst society has to offer.
I have to say, that some individuals from other states that i know that have heard about the story of the family woman living a law abiding and productive life in SanDiego brought to Michigan for resentencing and when i told them about our Prison costs and state budget problems, consider Michigan’s judicial system to be a national Joke.
The people in charge are the ones at failure here. Im in favor of forcing all top level positions in State government to lower set salaries if they make decisions about how our tax money is spent or how our major state departments are run.
They are overpaid for the results, and its an inherent conflict of interest for any state servant to be paid by the state for determining who and where our money goes to. So to then also pay these people a very high salary for poor performance is ludicrous.
Especially when Hundreds of Thousands of michigan residents are unemployed, hundreds of thousands more are struggling to have heat, keep their homes, are already homeless, facing bankruptcy, unable to buy food, clothes, repair broken cars, utilities etc.
Hoping they’ll voluntarily send a check back to Lansing is a great reason not to hold your breath.
We have a lot of Wealthy, Greedy, Pompous, Arrogant, obnoxious, poor performing, self absorbed, self enriching, self centered, individuals that went to government for themselves and their cronyism ideas of steering funding and contracts to their buddies instead of taking waste out of government, providing More service and less cost. And usually the only thing they do to cut costs is Lay off the lowest paid employees and Entrench themselves and their big time paychecks.
Thats REAL “Entitlement” folks. People who walk in feeling entitled to Enrich themselves.
Social security and medicaid/medicare are NOT ‘entitlement’ programs. They are social programs funded by the people receiving them, and funded by people working to recieve them in the future, and NO recipient is getting rich off either of those two programs.
Im sorry it seems to me visiting a prison is not the same as working in one. WHERE were all of you 10 years ago when my husband stood up against the DOC? He told you all then that this was going to happen, as a Correctional Food Service Manager for over 10 years he wrote to Gov. Engler and told him how (in 1997) he could save the state hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Gatha McClellan Food Service Director testified in Federal Court that he was wrong he could save this state MILLIONS per year. If that was the case then, why was his letter referred back to the Department of Corrections? Why did Attorney General Jennifer Granholm allow her office to persecute him? And now after he lost his job, his life as he knew it, his self respect. Why when he wrote to Gov. Granholm and every Representative and Senator in this State offering to help, he has gotten no reply. My final question is for all of you, where were you? You didn’t care then, why now? Nothing will change in this state when you are all too self absorbed to get involved when it matters. My husband (Mark Freeland) stood alone for all of you, stand up for him now.freelama@yahoo.com
For many years I had many misconceptions regarding our prison system until I became reunited with a great friend of mine who happens to be in the system. I now see how unfair inmates are treated and how each facility is ran differently. For instance, visiting hours start at 2:30pm, at Lakeland in Coldwater the staff are very friendly and when you come in they call up the person you are there to visit right away so your visit can start at 2:30, up at The Straits facility in Kinceloe, the staff at the desk for the most part ignore you, treat you as if you are an inconvience and will take their time calling up the man you are there to visit. I have waited up to 30-45 minutes just to have them call the person from the unit. These inmates live in facilities that were meant to house half of the amount and they were only to be temporary housing and continue to be used. Any sports equipment, chairs in the visiting room, games in the visiting rooms, the microwave in the visiting room is purchased from funds from the inmates, not from state dollars as so many people think. Cable, if they have it is funded through the inmate fund. If an inmate has a televison it is because they purchased it with money someone sent them or they earned from a job that pays maybe a dollar a day. In the year and a half that I have visited three different facilities in Michigan I see guards standing around, talking to each other, not really doing anything at all, and there are several guards at one time just standing around. My friend complains about how hot it is in the pole barns that they reside in, in the winter, they could turn down the heat to save money. I have been in the visiting room when it was 0 degrees outside and the windows are open because it is so hot in the building. My friend was in the UP for 7 years and then moved to down south, when he asked for a transfer to be closer to me and his family they moved him back up north over 300 hundred miles away. They need to look at time off for good behavior, my friend has been an outstanding inmate if you will, and yet he still has 2 1/2 years to go when he could do more to benefit himself, his family and society by being out of the prison system. He costs the state $35,000 each year he is locked up but if he was out he could be contributing to his community instead of takiing from it.
I would like to see the death penalty be reinstated here in Michigan. Does anyone knows of anyone or group that is trying to bring back the death penalty here in Michigan? If no one doing so, I would like to start a group to look at this issue and place it on the ballot to let voters decide. If anyone with info about helping me, email, cheflarbear@rocketmail.com
I have a simple question to ask. I want to know what kind of people do all the taxpayers think are locked up in the PRISON SYSTEM ? If you think it is just thieves , murders and sex offenders you would be wrong. We in this state have a fair number of drunk drivers , drug addicts and mentally ill people. How they got here is a unique story. It was called the politics of Personal Responsibility. What that meant was it was going to be Families who were going to take responsibilty for their mentally ill family memebers. Well it didn’t quite work out that way. What it really mean is that the D.O.C will be held responsible for any mentally ill prisoner who happens to be injured or dies while in their care. This also means a family will now sue you even if they have never visited or cared to check on the family member. This also means that every person who works in the prison which is Secretaries, Guards,Maint People , Educators and Food Service workers have to be trained to handle and be able to report to shift commanders if these people are having problems. This does not mean treat them but be able to get them to someone who may be able to help them. Their drug needs are not cheap and some will sell their medication or have it stolen creating more problems with in the system. I want to know how many taxpayers will be willing to have a half-way house in their neighborhoods to have these people treated as out-patients to reduce costs.Are taxpayers willing to have these same Half-way houses fo drunk drivers & addicts also. Now I want to remind you all that we used to have places for these people away from mainstream society. They were called places like THE COLDWATER REGIONAL CENTER now called Lakeland & Florence Crane Correctional Facilities. We as citizens have to ask what we want to do. We are going to have to DEAL with the reality of what will happen no matter what changes we enact and the cost of doing it. To just rail against the Dept. of Corrections for some of this is shortsighted. The Dept of Corrections had this situation thrust on them and they have NO CHOICE but to comply and do the job given them. I am not saying to ignore the cost but rather FIND OUT ALLLLLL the FACTS before any changes are made. This is just one small area of corrections and I believe if people understood and realized what and how corrections works it would be easier to fix. Remember what may seem to be an easy or simple task to perform is NOT what it appears. I urge you to find a Prison Guard , Secretary , Maint Man , Food Service Worker or any one else there and ask them what it takes to do a simple task. Thank You
Michigan has many reasons for its high prison costs. One of them is the rampant inefficiency of over-crowding. If you look at the appeal of Posting #3, Shannon, above, this is typical. A recent group appointed to investigate and recommend sentencing reform guidelines to cut overcrowding found that clerical errors contributed to perhaps 20% of Michigan’s overcrowding. Mainly these errors occur when inmates are violated for things they did not do and the violations are not corrected, thereby impacting their good time and their subsequent ability to achieve parole, not early parole, not sometimes, any parole. Some inmates are held beyond their out date, due to the same bookkeeping backups. The enormous crime against the Michigan taxpayers is that we keep on paying for these bodies, who should be out and walking among us,in many cases working and thriving as productive citizens (especially if you want to count the 20% who took plea bargains but were not guilty of the crimes which they pled guilty to), assuming someone would hire them.
So ultimately the conundrum is that there is no incentive to clean up the inefficiencies, because they are revenue producing. Now the governor wants to save money by talking these same convicts who are already overcrowded and stuff them in together with other inmates who are overcrowded. I heard her say something like “The inmates won’t mind.” What a great attitude. It epitomizes the way society feels about these people, who are people, many of whom made mistakes, often through being born into situations that made them grow up hard. Yes, they made choices. But we don’t know what we would have done in those circumstances. But this is not about that.
It is about the stupidity of letting out people who might be dangerous when we can let out the people that shouldn’t be there in the first place. What Michigan prisons need is an audit of their records and the people’s records should be updated, investigated, corrected. Those eligible for parole should get their hearings. Those who should be out should be out. Then let’s talk about closing down maximum security facilities or double bunking people who will kill their bunkies in their sleep because they are sociopaths and that’s how they roll. Come on gov, get real.
first of all it shouldnt be an issue about training or educating or healthcare for poeple who are in these prisons they shouldnt get anything my husband was murdered and one of these idiots will probably be considered let go if these prisons are closed they ruined my life and my families lives they dont deserve anything but possibly a bed and crappy food not one other thing and it was your family member you would feel the same way i hope the govenor uses her head and heart before she conciders closing these places and letting go these idiots