Harsh sentences lead to ‘death by incarceration’

El cargo Inside Voices – September 2024 apareció por primera vez en Safe & Just Michigan.

Over the last 40 years, Michigan has slowly but undeniably adopted “Death by Incarceration” (DBI), for prisoners serving life sentences. Prior to the sentencing reforms that began in the ’80s, lifers were in one of two categories; those who were not getting out (about 25 percent), and those who were getting out (about 75 percent). Half of those prisoners who were released had their sentences commuted and the other half received sentence modifications through the appellate courts.

The old school administrators had it right. Serial killers cannot be lumped in with non-shooters and felony murder cases. Painting everyone with the same “life means life” brush in the context of mandatory life sentences is what amounts to collective punishment. Separate the prisoners you fear from the prisoners you are mad at. Keeping elderly prisoners locked up whom you do not fear is an injustice specific to non-death penalty systems.

Example: five young adults rob a liquor store. The owner is shot in the course of the robbery and dies. They all get convicted and sentenced to mandatory life under the felony murder rule. The shooter is 17 years old, two are 18 years old and two are 20 years old. The 17-year-old gets a chance at parole because in 2016 the United States Supreme Court made mandatory life without parole sentences illegal for 17-year-olds. The two 18-year-olds get a chance at parole because in 2023 the Michigan Supreme Court made mandatory life without parole sentences illegal for 18-year-olds. The two 20-year-olds die in prison because Michigan does not recognize the prohibition on collective punishment.

Collective punishment — a penalty inflicted on a group of persons without regard to individual responsibility for the conduct giving rise to the penalty. Collective punishment was outlawed in 1949 by the Geneva Conventions.

~ Dennis Vertin
Egeler Reception and Guidance Center 

Not enough help for mental health in prison

I was 25 years old when I was given 20 to 40 years for a perjury I am not guilty of. I was placed in a jury room with my mother crying to take a plea. My lawyer tricked me, making me believe I was getting 78 months. The judge changed my guidelines at sentencing to 260 months and gave me 240 months. He denied all my appeals. I had no help and didn’t know the law. I have been locked up since 2010 and because my out date until 2031 I get no schooling or classes. They say you have to be two years from your ERD with nothing to do. I felt like the world was over. I tried many times to kill myself in prison due to all the chaos in live within these walls. We get not help I have been in and out of mental health facility (WCC) there is no help here. It’s just like segregation. They took everything. No school, no classes, only groups playing card etc. … Where is the help within these walls? We get no help. Lansing seems not to care. The administration is no help. Where is this rehabilitation coming from? We need real prison reform instead of taxpayers paying $48,000 a year to just throw our lives away.

~ Christopher Goike
Woodland Correctional Center

False hope is hurting us

Criminal justice reforms all talk and no action. It does nothing but hurt the incarcerated every time they hear that things are looking up, just to find that nothing’s going to happen for this reason or for that reason. Every other year’s an election year for something. If nothing gets done during election years, then you might as well say nothing’s ever going to get done. Stop giving false hope because it just causes depression when inmates put all their hope in something that fails to happen. I’m not saying don’t do anything; I’m saying actually do something.

Also, everyone’s starting from the wrong point. The point that the criminal justice reform needs to start is with the legal system as a whole. Locking up innocent people and blocking their every attempt of trying to get the truth out isn’t the way to reduce the population of people that are incarcerated. There are too many groups that are “trying to do ‘criminal justice reform’ and ‘innocence groups,’ but no one seems to doing be doing much besides getting a lot of donations with no results. Why not become one big group that truly takes care of all of these things that are needed? And when giving information to the incarcerated, tell them that nothing can happen unless they are willing to do something with you. Because when you just tell the incarcerated what you’re doing it just builds up false hope.

Grace and Peace

~ Timothy Lee Solloway
Saginaw Correctional Facility

Accountability doesn’t come easy

When I was sentenced to prison, the reason was to be punished for the crime that I committed and also to be rehabilitated. My rehabilitation is solely on me because regardless of how many classes or groups that I volunteer or am recommended to take, I’m not going to change until I’m ready. With that being said, growth and change has not been an easy process. Being vulnerable, responsible and accountable is not an easy process, but all our processes that I have and I’m still going through are a choice, and I chose to leave a better person than I came. I know that growth comes from facing the most uncomfortable situations, questions and conversations.

Unfortunately, some of the hardest questions that I have had to answer did not come from the facilitators in my groups, the books that I have to learn from or even the parole board that I will have to face, they came from my sons. My kings. Recently, I pushed open a door to be transparent with them responding to any and everything they wanted to ask, from my relationship with their father to the crime against him that brought me here. Regardless of how prepared I thought I was, I really wasn’t ready to answer the questions that they were asking me but I did. In this process I had to expose my past characteristic shortcomings, I had to tarnish my semi-infallible personal portrait that I had painted for myself to them and that is not an image that I wanted my son to have of me. I had to let them know that even though he was the abuser I wasn’t always innocent.

I had to learn that I can’t get defensive with the things that they want to know because I owe them the truth, and regardless of how hard it may have been to hear myself say some of those things out loud, they had to be said. Stepping outside my comfortability to give my sons what they need has been one of the most emotional, challenging, yet enlightening, cleansing, and humbling experiences that I have ever felt. I thank them because I know this is just as hard for them and as it is for me, and it takes courage to do what it is that they are doing with such open-mindedness and respect. Knowing that doing this is giving them some of the pieces to fill in the blank parts of their lives, they’re gapped memories and their unsolved inquiries to start the healing process is worth any discomfort that I must face.

~ Felicia Hale
Women’s Huron Valley

El cargo Inside Voices – September 2024 apareció por primera vez en Safe & Just Michigan.