Michigan
Step 2: Provide policymakers with options to generate savings and increase public safety.
In January 2009, the Justice Reinvestment Working Group convened a statewide policy forum that included a cross section of stakeholders representing law enforcement, the judiciary, counties and community-based organizations. The purpose of the forum was to review a set of policy options developed by the Justice Center to save the state approximately $262 million between 2009 and 2013 by reducing the prison population by 10 percent over this period while reinforcing the state’s truth-in-sentencing policy and not changing sentencing laws.
The Justice Center’s package of policy options, which aimed to deter criminal activity, lower recidivism, and reduce spending on corrections, included the following:
Deter Criminal Activity
- Provide support to local law enforcement to deploy targeted crime-fighting strategies and apprehend more violent offenders.
- Provide employment opportunities to youth disconnected from school and work and at-risk of criminal involvement.
Lower Recidivism
- Reduce the rate of rearrest among probationers by employing risk assessments and data systems and providing agencies with resources to target high risk probationers.
- Respond to probation violations with swift, certain and proportional sanctions.
- Expand employment services for high-risk probationers and parolees.
Reduce Spending on Corrections
- Ensure that most individuals (except for those with statutory maximum life sentences) serve 100 to 120 percent of their court-imposed minimum sentence.
- Require people revoked for the first time from parole for condition violations to serve no more than 9 months in prison.
- Ensure that everyone released from prison receive a period of supervision in the community.
The package of policy options also included an accountability strategy that charges a state agency, independent body, or outside organization with periodically assessing the fiscal and public safety impact of these policies on various components of the state’s overall criminal justice system, and the outcomes for people released from prison and under community supervision and the communities where they return.