Ending life and long sentences in Michigan: Part 1 of 3

From the September 2024 Criminal Defense Newsletter
Introduction

Imagine growing old, away from loved ones, trees, nutritious foods, access to movement, and subject to daily abuse and neglect in a place where you lack any degree of autonomy. This is the harsh and isolative reality for many people in Michigan’s prisons, sentenced to die there. Despite advancements in criminal justice reform aimed at addressing mass incarceration, those serving life and excessively long sentences remain largely ignored by the reforms that have taken place. And, in many respects, their conditions have only worsened in prison while reforms have begun to take place for others. The majority of individuals serving these draconian sentences have spent their lives on the margins of society due to their race, gender, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity. Those reforms that have taken place over the past two decades have failed to provide any degree of relief for this group of people who were hit hardest by Michigan’s criminal legal system. 

In this article we explain the problem of life and excessively long sentences. We provide a brief overview of where we are and how we got here. In future articles, we will discuss the moral and fiscal implications of relying on extreme punishment as a solution to social harms and present two solutions: returning to expansive clemency practices and increasing judicial discretion to revisit sentences through Second Look legislation.

Michigan’s prison population through the years

In 2007, Michigan’s prison population exceeded 51,000 people. This crisis was fueled by a long series of ill-informed policies that began in the 1960s and only grew in terms of influence and acceptability throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. From there, we continued to double-down on retribution as our answer to crime, both in terms of excessively punitive sentencing laws and harsh parole policies. 1 We then continued to rely on harsh punishment as a crime deterrent throughout the 1990s and well into the 2000s until we began to adopt some piecemeal policy reforms aimed at reducing our overreliance on incarceration. It is now broadly understood that many of these “tough on crime” policies—such as the so-called “war on drugs” and the bi-partisan “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act” of 1994—were (and still are) deeply tied to the legacy of racism in the United States. 2 These political and policy decisions, which criminalized behaviors largely stemming from social inequities, led to an overcrowded and increasingly punitive criminal legal system. Despite decades of research demonstrating the inefficacy of long prison sentences as a crime deterrent, we continue to rely on harsh punishments rather than investing those resources into things that would actually create healthier, safer communities. 3

As prisons across the country filled up disproportionately with Black and Brown people, a public outcry, including collective affinity for and promotion of ideas presented by leaders–intellectual and celebrity alike–folks like Michelle Alexander, Kim Kardashian, James Foreman, John Legend, Van Jones, occurred. In addition, the attention to mass incarceration was broad and encompassed a bi-partisan audience. Reform efforts were philanthropically and governmentally funded by both the right and the left. 4

These more intellectual, philanthropic, and celebrity-driven forms of social change trickled down into many facets of advocacy around criminal justice reforms. For the last 15 years, resources, policy, and public attention have been directed towards alleviating the stressors caused to our prison and jail systems by comprehensive diversion 5 and parole strategies 6 for people sentenced to non-life and “lower-level” offenses. 

In Michigan, after much work by advocates and public officials, gigantic upticks in parole grants at or near earliest release dates (ERDs) were first prompted under the leadership of Governor Granholm and Director Patricia Caruso. These practices were refined over the years through both internal MDOC policies (e.g., reduction in technical parole violations; access to more precise, “evidence-based” MDOC programming) and legislative initiatives (e.g., Objective/Presumptive Parole 7)

Through all of these positive reforms, there has been a complete disregard for people serving life and excessively long sentences, which has led to a drastic increase in the average minimum sentence in Michigan and a prison population that is continuously growing older as every day passes. We know harsher sentences do not create less harm in our communities, yet politicians continue to ignore proposed policies that could address what is a burgeoning, multi-pronged fiscal and moral crisis in Michigan’s prisons–an aging and costly prison population and a serious and long-standing staffing shortage that has been growing worse for more than ten years.

The Problem: Extreme sentences

Michigan is an outlier when it comes to sending people to prison for long periods of time. As we have reported 8 elsewhere: 

Nationally, 17% of individuals serving prison sentences have served 10 years or more. In Michigan, one-third (32%) of the prison population has served 10 years or more. Further, 41% of the Michigan prison population will have to serve at least 10 years before becoming eligible for parole. Most of those individuals will have to serve much more than ten years before becoming eligible for parole. Finally, nearly 4,500 people (approximately 14% of the full Michigan prison population) will spend the rest of their lives in prison, however many years that may be for each of them. 9

Michigan was the first state in the union and the first English-speaking jurisdiction in the world to abolish the death penalty in 1846. And, while we have sentenced people to life without parole (LWOP) throughout our modern prison system’s existence, up until 1964 we had a release valve for people serving LWOP sentences to ensure they would return to society as contributing citizens: 

Up until the 1960s, people who were serving LWOP sentences for first-degree murder served longer than anyone else and those sentences were commuted as a general practice once the person served 25 years. 10

Today, the clemency powers of the governor are seldom used and there are no other valves to offer a chance at freedom for people who are serving life or excessively long sentences. 

This inability to review and release people who no longer pose any threat to the community (and who might actually help our communities remain more at peace) means a large number of people are being left to grow old and die in the confines of prison. We are in the middle of a public health crisis caused by the very real negative physical and mental health outcomes that prison has on human bodies more generally and the many years of exposure to unhealthy conditions: 
  • Access to over-processed food and little access to fresh fruits and vegetables, 
  • Lack of ability to move and exercise due to staffing shortages and security and control measures trumping well-being,
  • Physical make-up of the prison, including walking around on concrete, sleeping on hard surfaces, living in overcrowded conditions that lead to constant and hyper-arousal,
  • Lack of comprehensive mental health services rooted in trauma SPECIFIC modalities (trauma informed is NOT TRAUMA SPECIFIC or FOCUSED)
  • Insufficient medical and mental health care 
  • Lack of staff to attend to the complex needs of imprisoned people
In Part Two of this series, we will provide a complete overview of second look legislation and the relief it would provide to this complex problem. 

Natalie Holbrook-Combs
Peter J. Martel
American Friends Service Committee

Natalie Holbrook-Combs has worked against the punishment system and for collective accountability and healing for 20 years. Natalie’s work is centered around ending life and long sentences in Michigan. Organizing with people in prison and people who have been to prison, through her paid work with the American Friends Service Committee’s Michigan Criminal Justice Program, has been the most meaningful calling and privilege imaginable. She also organizes with Liberate Don’t Incarcerate (LDI), a Washtenaw County abolitionist organization, committed to dreaming and working into existence a county rooted in healing and transformation, not punishment, vengeance, and cages. Two of the greatest gifts she has experienced in her organizing have been through building with Siwatu-Salama Ra’s Freedom Team and Tashiena Lanay Combs’ Freedom Team.

Pete Martel is a Program Coordinator at AFSC’s Michigan Criminal Justice Program in Ypsilanti, Michigan. In this role he works with volunteers and interns to carry out direct service advocacy work with people incarcerated in Michigan’s prison system. He is leading up individual liberation work for long and life serving people in Michigan’s prisons. He has worked in various capacities in Michigan’s criminal legal system and is currently a graduate student in the University of Michigan’s Sociology Department. His research interests include the legal system, criminal procedure, and punishment. Pete loves music.

Endnotes

1 Yantus, Sentence Creep: Increasing Penalties in Michigan and the Need for Sentencing Reform, 47 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 645 (2014); Safe & Just Michigan. Objective Parole Fact Sheet, (Oct. 12, 2018) <www.safeandjustmi.org/2018/10/12/fact-sheet-objective-parole/> (accessed Sept. 17, 2024).

2 Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010); Mauer, Race to Incarcerate (2d ed.) (The New Press, 2006).

3 National Institute of Justice, Five Things About Deterrence (May 2016) <nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence> (accessed Sept. 17, 2024).

4 Eren, Historic Bipartisan Justice Reform Turns Five (2022) <https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/reform-nation-colleen-eren-first-step-act> (accessed Sept. 17, 2024).

5 For example, Michigan’s 2021 criminal justice reform package was based on recommendations from the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration. These reforms sought to reduce jail populations by increasing the use of diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration for offenses like driving on a suspended license and minor probation violations. See Pew Charitable Trusts, Michigan Enacts Landmark Jail Reforms (Sept. 23, 2021) < https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2021/09/michigan-enacts-landmark-jail-reforms> (accessed Sept. 17, 2024).

6 Objective Parole Fact Sheet, note 1.

7 Alliance for Safety and Justice, Legislators & Advocates Applaud Governor Snyder Signing Objective Parole Bill into Law (Sept. 13, 2018) <allianceforsafetyandjustice.org/press-release/legislators-advocates-applaud-governor-snyder-signing-objective-parole-bill-into-law/> (accessed Sept. 17, 2024).

8 American Friends Service Committee. Second Look Legislation Policy Briefing. (2024) <https://afsc.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/second-look-legislation-a-ford-school-policy-briefing_2.pdf> (accessed Sept. 16, 2024). 

9 Id.

10 Id., Appendix B: Parole Board Chair Memo to MDOC Director Gus Harrison and Director Harrison Memo to Governor Romney (1964).