Reactive Lawmakers Work to Make Michigan's Prison Crisis Worse

 

Michigan has had a crisis in its prison system for years now. The MDOC is severely understaffed, and it's been that way for a long time. Last I heard, they are still short over 1000 corrections officers. Despite the prison population declining from a high of over 50,000 prisoners to just over 32,000 today, the staffing problem persists.  Additionally, Michigan prisoners serve, on average, longer than prisoners in any other state in the Union. We also have a very large population of lifers and people serving sentences long enough to be life in prison (plus some!). Some of these statistics are because Michigan has no form of good time for prisoners to earn time cuts. Another reason is because Michigan has long mandatory sentences for several crimes.  Recently, several out of touch lawmakers introduced a package of bills in the Michigan House that would result in a drastic increase in our prison population, mainly because of more, and much longer, mandatory sentences.  House Bill 5704, and its attendant bills, would increase the sentence lengths of dozens of crimes, making minimum sentences mandatory and leaving open the possibility for excessively long sentences, even up to life in prison. For more than two dozen crimes, this bill would increase the minimum sentence. For example, illegal possession or transportation of a firearm by those with specific prior offenses currently has a 5 year maximum sentence. This bill would change that to a 5 or 10 year *minimum* and allow up to a life sentence for the same crime. Retail fraud currently carries a 5 year maximum sentence, but this bill would make 5 years a mandatory minimum and allow up to a life sentence. For retail fraud?! What are these lawmakers thinking? For some crimes, this bill would double the current maximum sentence and make it a mandatory minimum (i.e. a 10 year max would become a 20 year minimum). Felony stalking, which currently has a 1 year max, would become a 2 1/2 year minimum, and allow up to life in prison.  In addition to setting mandatory minimums for these and other crimes, this bill would allow up to life sentences for the following crimes: Assault, battery, domestic violence, home invasion, interfering with a witness, child abuse, accosting a child for immoral purposes, child sexually abusive material, embezzlement, escape from a correctional institution, malicious threatening, false pretenses, discharging a gun from a motor vehicle, manslaughter, larceny, kidnapping, fleeing and eluding, various criminal sexual conduct charges, identity theft, welfare fraud, certain drug possession or distribution charges, medicaid fraud, and personal protection violations. Yes, the courts could sentence you to life in prison for violating a PPO under this ridiculous bill. None of these crimes are okay, obviously, but mandating longer sentences is not going to solve anything. It will only make the prison population and staff shortage problems bigger. Furthermore, scientific studies have already proven that longer sentences do not make communities safer. Crime must be addressed, and even punished, but longer sentences will not solve the problem.  While most states are slowly aligning themselves with current scientific conclusions about criminal justice reforms, Michigan is doing just the opposite. Why are our lawmakers so out of touch that they still believe, even in the face of staffing failures, that longer sentences will be more just and the solution to crime? It demonstrates a lazy approach to problem solving and a complete lack of touch with reality.  I hope that the Michigan legislature will ignore this bill like they have all the good criminal justice reform bills that have died in committees this legislative calendar. It isn't worth the paper its printed on. Maybe if they'd seriously consider reforms that would reduce the prison population without endangering communities, they'd actually begin to solve problems instead of creating them.