California’s governor is choosing a reform path Michigan leaders have chosen not to walk in recent years…
In his state of the state address earlier this month, Schwarzenegger vowed to pursue a constitutional amendment preventing the state from spending more on prisons than universities.
“Choosing universities over prisons,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said, as quoted in the New York Times. “This is a historic and transforming realignment of California’s priorities.”
In sad contrast, Michigan has gained a reputation in recent years as one of the few states to have that equation backwards. Consider this year’s general fund budget priorities… $1.96 billion for the Michigan Department of Corrections and $1.61 billion for the state’s 15 public universities.
For more than a year, the Center for Michigan has worked with a broad coalition of business, education, nonprofit and government groups to pressure the Legislature and Granholm administration to shrink the huge piece of the general fund pie devoted to the prison system. We’ve had modest progress to date, and we will meet again with officials in Lansing on January 20 to continue pressing for prison system reforms.
It’s important to note that the prison system is now about 5,000 inmates below its 2007 peak. But more can, and must, be done to bring down the cost of corrections. One small example… The Legislature agreed on a $841 per prisoner spending cut last fall. The governor vetoed that cut, meaning $38 million in general fund dollars that could have gone to any number of other state programs, from education to early childhood investments, instead got plowed back into the prison system.
The Detroit Free Press opined on several other possible prison reforms in an editorial last weekend, including these…
epeal Michigan’s notorious juvenile lifer law, which has rightly drawn fire from human rights groups worldwide. The law has forced judges to give kids as young as 14 the maximum adult penalty of life without parole. More than 300 Michigan inmates are serving such sentences. Giving them a shot at parole would likely save millions of dollars.
