Media coverage of recent deaths at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility (WHV) have intensified concerns about systemic problems across Michigan prisons. MI-CEMI and coalition partners are identifying short-, medium-, and long-term actions to improve safety, transparency, healthcare access, and accountability across the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC).
No single action can address the confluence of factors that create the current crisis, but decarceration is a vital first step. Michigan cannot safely and humanely house our current prison population. Tell Governor Whitmer to use her executive clemency power to safely reduce Michigan’s prison population and read below for additional ways to address the current crisis.
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What Needs to Happen
MI-CEMI has been working with patterns to identify short, medium, and long-term actions. We are still building consensus on final goals, but here are some of the actions that have emerged.
- Short-Term Priorities: Reduce overcrowding, improve healthcare access, and establish trusted mold testing and remediation processes at WHV.
- Medium-Term Priorities: Strengthen independent oversight of MDOC, pass Survivor Justice legislation, and prioritize leadership focused on rehabilitation and decarceration.
- Long-Term Priorities: Advance resentencing legislation and reduce excessive prison sentences that contribute to overcrowding and unsafe conditions.
Short Term
- Ease prison overcrowding through clemency, commutation, medical parole, and other existing legal means. It is impossible to provide humane conditions when prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. Many women and men in MDOC custody would be safe to return home, especially those who have serious or debilitating medical conditions, those who are elderly, and those who have already served 20 years or more.
- Improve healthcare access: Early reports indicate that a factor in some of the recent deaths may have been that people were turned away from medical care when they sought treatment. Ensure that MDOC policies, procedures, and actual actions on the ground ensure that incarcerated people can access quality, responsive healthcare.
- Initiate a mold testing and remediation plan that focuses on public trust and expert guidance: The MDOC reports that they “worked with an independent, certified expert to complete comprehensive environmental testing at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility” and that “Findings of these tests were consistent with expected results typically found in large settings where individuals live and work.” People don’t trust these results, and they don’t trust that the cleanup efforts at WHV are using proper methods to ensure the health and safety of the workers doing the cleanup and the women living at the facility.
Testing and cleanup methods must put public trust and expert guidance first by being transparent about vendor selection and qualifications, stakeholder agreement on testing protocols and target levels, allowing 3rd party observation of sample collection, and publishing of unredacted findings.
Medium Term
- Strengthen oversight and accountability of MDOC: A department with the size, cost, and potential for harm of MDOC needs strong, independent oversight. Advocates have put forward different perspectives on how to best achieve this, including bills to expand the power of the Legislative Corrections Ombudsman.
- Pass Survivor Justice Legislation: Too many people in prison, especially women, are in prison for crimes related to their experiences of domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking. These coercive circumstances are not considered at trial or during sentencing. As a result, survivors are harmed first by their abuser, then by the state. Survivor Justice Acts, similar to the one passed in Georgia, address this by creating a pathway to reduce prison sentences at the time of initial sentencing as well as through retroactive resentencing for people already sentenced.
- Recruit an MDOC Director who prioritizes safety, rehabilitation, and safe decarceration. In November Michiganders will elect a new governor, and often this transition brings with it new leadership for departments like MDOC. As the new governor takes office, they should prioritize safety for incarcerated people, rehabilitation, and safe decarceration.
Long Term
Pass Resentencing Legislation: Too many Michiganders are in prison serving excessive prison sentences. These long sentences not only fail to promote public safety by keeping people in prison after they would be safe to return home, they actively undermine public safety by diverting funds from education, victim compensation, violence prevention, and drug treatment. The answer is to pass resentencing legislation such as Second Look or recent resentencing bills in Colorado. These ease prison overcrowding, address the staffing crises, and free up funds to go to public safety programs that actually work.
The post The Crisis at WHV Is Bigger Than One Prison first appeared on Michigan Collaborative to End Mass Incarceration.