Michigan has shrunk its prison population by more than 7,000 inmates since 2006. Nevertheless, the state’s prison system continues to consume more than 20 percent of the state’s general fund budget. Now, some legislators are considering whether shipping some of the state’s 43,000 inmates to a private prison would, finally, make a dent in Michigan’s […]
Joe Haveman
Posted inMichigan Government
An unlikely advocate for review of Michigan prison sentences
Joe Haveman is about the last person in the State Capitol you’d expect to advocate for softer prison sentences. The 50-year-old Holland native is a conservative Republican legislator from a conservative Republican district, the kind of pedigree associated with the attitude of locking them up and throwing away the key. “We tried that,” Haveman noted. […]
Posted inMichigan Government
DOC doesn't know if prisoner release effort works
A new Auditor General report is going to cause some heartburn in the Michigan Department of Corrections and in the Legislature. It says that DOC has spent about $130 million on a prisoner re-entry program — and has no clue whether the program actually works. The Michigan Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative was a centerpiece of the […]
Posted inPeter Luke: Eye on the Capitol
Capitol conundrum: Fewer inmates, same high costs
Round numbers can provoke course corrections because they are easier to understand and, if large enough, shock the system. Here are a couple: 50,000 and $2 billion. The first is the inmate population barrier breached at the Michigan Department of Corrections in 2006. The department’s budget first exceeded the latter figure in fiscal year 2008. […]