Michigan
Step 1: Analyze the prison population and spending in the communities to which people in prison often return.
In 2008, state policymakers in Michigan requested intensive technical assistance from the Council of State Governments Justice Center to guide the development of a statewide policy framework that reduces crime and victimization, reduces spending on corrections, and reinvests in targeted efforts to increase public safety in high-crime neighborhoods. Governor Granholm, Majority Leader Bishop, and Speaker Dillon designated officials to participate in a bipartisan, bicameral, and inter-branch Justice Reinvestment Working Group to guide the Justice Center’s technical assistance to the state. The Justice Center provided state officials with analyses of crime, community corrections, and sentencing policies. Some of the key highlights from the analyses included:
Crime
- Rates of violent crime in Michigan declined just two percent between 2000 and 2007; arrests for violent crimes, however, declined 22 percent during the same 7-year period.
- Homicide victims are disproportionately young, male, and African American
- Despite having the highest crime rate in the Great Lakes region, Michigan has the fewest local law enforcement personnel per capita.
- The certainty of apprehension for people committing violent crime in Michigan is low and appears to be declining.
- Across Michigan, more than 27,500 young adults between the ages of 16–19 are neither working nor attending school and do not have their high school diploma. In particular counties and neighborhoods across Michigan, the percentage of young adults fitting this description is more than 10 percent.
- Young men between the ages of 17 and 24 commit 26 percent of violent index crimes, despite comprising only 6 percent of the state’s population.
Community Corrections
- The majority of people arrested for violent and property crimes are not currently on felony probation or parole. Of all arrests in Michigan in 2007, only ten percent were attributable to offenders currently on supervision.
- Fifty percent of people on probation supervision and 50 to70 percent of people on parole are unemployed.
Sentencing
- People released from prison in 2007 had served, on average, 127 percent of their court-imposed minimum sentence before being placed on community supervision.
- More than 1,000 offenders were released in 2007 to no community supervision. Of those who maxed out in 2007, 42 percent were incarcerated for violent offenses and 37 percent were for sex offenses.
- Michigan’s spending on corrections increased 15 percent, from $1.6 billion in FY 2001-02 to $1.8 billion in FY 2007.
- In the past ten years, state spending on corrections increased from 16.2 percent of state general fund expenditures in FY 1997 to 22.6 percent in FY 2007.