2023-2024 Legislative Lookback

The 2023-2024 legislative season has closed. 

• Establishing a bipartisan sentencing commission (HB4173, HB 4384): Michigan’s sentencing guidelines have no basis in evidence when it comes to preventing crime, promoting rehabilitation, and stewarding taxpayer dollars. A bipartisan sentencing commission creates a vehicle by which the sentencing guidelines can be carefully reviewed and brought into line with the best data. For some sentences that may mean increasing guidelines, but given Michigan’s overall excessive prison terms, we believe many sentencing guidelines will come down. This not only affects new cases, but is a potential tool to support clemency petitions on existing cases as well as potential second look cases.
• State IDs on Reentry (HB 4191, 4192, 4193, 4194): When people are released from prison by parole or discharge, they have to find housing and employment to get their reentry off to a good start. When they are released without vital documents such as a state ID, birth certificate, and social security card, this process is unnecessarily delayed. These bills will strengthen the process to secure these documents prior to release.
• Violence Prevention Funding (HB 6046): The best way to prevent incarceration is to prevent violence crime in the first place. This bill makes it easier to access Medicaidi funding to support community violence intervention efforts. 

These end-of-term wins build on already-passed successes in the legislature such as:

• Juvenile Justice Reforms: A broad set of bipartisan legislation passed to ensure that the Juvenile Justice System better lives up to it’s rehabilitative (instead of punitive) function to support kids success in life. These include eliminating non-restitutionary juvenile court fines and fees, improving funding for community-based care, improving screening processes, and more. 
• Medical Parole (S599): Expands parole eligibility for medically frail incarcerated people
• Automatic Voter Registration at Release (HP 4983) supports civic engagement by formerly incarcerated people by creating a pathway for the MDOC to register them to vote as part of the release process. 
• Expand access to specialty courts (HB 4523, 4525): Michigan has historically refused to allow people charged with violence offenses to make use of mental health or drug treatment courts, even if the underlying reason for the charge relates to addiction or mental health needs. This legislation expands access to these courts in limited circumstances.  

In addition to these legislative wins, we have seen several budget successes over the past two years. In 2024 our budget wins include:

• Funding Clean Slate Expungement Lookup Portal: One barrier to the full impact of the groundbreaking, bipartisan clean slate package is that people who benefit from it have a hard time seeing if their record is cleared. The coalition requested funds to develop an improved lookup portal. While not included in the state FY2025 budget, we were able to secure a commitment from the state to allocate unspent Clean Slate implementation funds for this project. 
• Expansion in SADO Direct Appeals: The State Appellate Defender Office represents approximately 30% of people appealing criminal convictions after trial. They do amazing work, and the coalition supported their push to expand their direct appeal work. This request was funded in the FY 2024-2025 budget. 
• Partially Funded: Sustainably Fund Community-Based Violence Intervention: Rather than relying only on police to respond after an incidence of violence, many communities across Michigan are using Community Violence Intervention models to prevent violence. But these programs need funds. We are grateful that the budget includes “$75 million to establish a Public Safety Trust Fund to provide cities, villages, and townships with additional resources for police services and to support community violence intervention efforts. However, the state has still not developed a recurring funding source for this trust fund. 
• Partial Win: Eliminate Medical Copays for Incarcerated Patients: Prison medical copays deter people from seeking treatment, create debt that incarcerated people carry with them, and drain the resources of the loved ones who support them. Eliminating co-pays will require both legislation and funding, which we were not able to achieve this cycle. We did succeed, however, in securing “boilerplate” language that does require the Michigan Department of Corrections to review and reduce some fees, such as deposit and phone fees, incurred by incarcerated Michiganders and their families.
• Funded: Expand Educational Access for Incarcerated Students:  A core element of MI-CEMI’s mission is to expand programming access to people who are incarcerated. The recent restoration of Pell Grant scholarships to  incarcerated adults helps achieve this goal, but it requires some funding and support. The MDOC budget includes $3.4 million to expand educational access at Thumb Correctional Facility across all education levels. 
• Improve Transparency and Accountability for Family Loss of Visits and the Use of Solitary Confinement (Boilerplate Language): Use of solitary confinement and denying the families of incarcerated people visitation rights are harmful practices that undermine the long term goals of rehabilitation and successful reentry. The budget includes reporting requirements related to the loss of visitation privileges and use of solitary confinement (administrative segregation). 
• Crisis intervention team training for prison staff. This budget allocation effort was led by Citizens for Prison Reform. Way to go CPR!

Our 2023 budget wins include:

• MDOC Budget
  • Body Cameras for Corrections Officers: The budget includes $7M for body cameras for correctional officers. Initial house and senate budgets didn’t include this funding, but last-minute advocacy by Citizens for Prison Reform helped lead to inclusion of the funds, especially in light of recent charges against the prison staff connected with the death of Jon Lancaster in solitary confinement. 
  • Higher Education in Prison: The budget includes $1.5M to expand access to comprehensive bachelor’s degree programs.
  • Reentry Funding Line Items: In addition to the regional reentry contracts (which MDOC calls “Offender Success), each year the budget includes several allocations to specific reentry programs, including. This year’s budget includes:
    • $2M for Nation Outside’s peer-led reentry program
• Michigan State Police:
  • Community-Based Crisis Response Pilot Grants: The final budget includes $1.5M for grants in Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Kalamazoo for community-based, non-police  response programs.
• Health and Human Services:
  • Includes $6.8M “to reduce firearm related injuries and fatalities and to support community-based organizations that provide community violence intervention services.”Includes $31.5M “to implement a recommendation from the Task Force on Juvenile Justice Reform to statutorily increase the state Child Care Fund reimbursement rate from 50% to 75% for community-based juvenile justice services.”
• Attorney General: 
  • Conviction Integrity Unit: Includes $1M to investigate innocence claims.
• Judiciary:
  • Court Data Transparency: Includes $4.5M for a statewide Court Data Transparency model 
  • Indigent Defense: Includes $3.2M to create a cost-share arrangement to increase compensation for appellate counsel for indigent defense. 
  • Juvenile Justice Task Force Recommendations: Includes
    • $2M to support recommendation #2 to create a Juvenile Justice Services division. 
    • $557k to support expanded appellate support for juveniles through the State Appellate Defender’s Office.

There is a lot to be proud of in what we’ve accomplished together!

Of course, we also grieve the bills that didn’t pass this year, some because there were not enough “yes” votes to get them across the finish line, others because the clock ran out on the legislature before they were able to pass both chambers. These include:

• Youth Defense to establish public defender standards for kids in the juvenile justice system.
• Second  Look to allow judges to review the sentences of people who have already served a long time behind bars.
• Ending Juvenile Life Without Parole.
• Police improvement to require training of officers on deescalation and other skills, limit use of no-knock warrants, establish use of force policy standards, and more. 
• Corrections Ombudsperson: SB 493 to improve reviews on MDOC practices
• Fair chance Housing to limit housing discrimination based on past convictions. 
• Pretrial reform to limit the use of wealth-based detention for people who have not been convicted of a crime.
• Prevent juvenile records from being used for housing discrimination: HB4948
• Clean Slate Adjustments: HB 4960, HB5957, SB0970
• Police Disciplinary Record Transparency: HB 5749
• Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act Cleanup: HB5431
• Partial FOIA Restoration: HB 4427
• End Prison Gerrymandering: SB0494
• Prison Voting Information: SB0835

Violence Prevention Fund:  HB 4605 & 4606