Michigan took a huge step forward on April 9 when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation forbidding the state’s police departments from confiscating people’s property without a criminal conviction. According to advocates and legislators, though, banning virtually unrestricted civil asset forfeiture is just the first of many planned reforms of the state’s criminal justice system.
A package of bills to stop the practice of automatically trying 17-year-olds as adults has passed both houses of the Republican-dominated state legislature. A separate package, which also has bipartisan support, would significantly reform Michigan’s cash bail system.
Enthusiasm for criminal justice reform isn’t limited to the legislature. On April 17, Gov. Whitmer signed an executive order creating a task force to study the state’s 81 jails and its criminal justice system overall. The task force, which has support from both major political parties, members of the state Supreme Court, and the Michigan Sheriffs’ Association, will be partially funded by a $1 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
According to a May 13 report by the Gongwer News Service, the state has recently passed laws improving legal representation for poor defendants and compensating people who have been wrongfully convicted. Michigan's department of corrections and state parole board are also being encouraged to release low-level offenders “with a higher percentage chance of success after incarceration” as soon as they are eligible for parole.
The state’s shift on criminal justice issues has been so thorough that former Republican Senate Majority Leader Dan DeGrow, who supported many of the state’s “tough on crime” bills in the 1980s and 1990s, told Gongwer that "In hindsight, we probably weren't right.”
Democratic state Sen. David LaGrand, who is one of several leading voices for criminal justice reform in Michigan’s legislature, told Daily Kos that legislators in both parties are finding that they share “common moral values” regarding criminal justice issues. “And one of those [values] is that I don't think any of us want to live in a two-track system where the rich and the poor are treated differently,” he said.
Jarrett Skorup, a spokesman for the right-leaning Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told Daily Kos that his organization has its sights set on even broader reforms. The center wants to make it easier to expunge past convictions from the records of people who have served their time; drop restrictions banning people with past convictions from being able to hold professional licenses; and enact a thorough review of the state’s large number of criminal laws.
“Michigan has just way more [criminal laws] on the books than other states, about 3,000 crimes. That's about 50 percent more than Indiana and Ohio,” Skorup said, adding that “having that great number of crimes on the books is a pretty big restriction on freedom.” A Portage, Michigan, police sergeant would agree. In 2012, the city’s government fired him for cheating on his wife because adultery is still a criminal felony under Michigan law.
Despite the state’s overall progress, Michigan’s legislature is still dragging its collective feet in an area that has earned the state condemnation in federal courts: reform of its sex offender registry, which is among the harshest and most restrictive in the country. Even though key parts of the state’s registry law have been found unconstitutional, and Attorney General Dana Nessel has criticized the registry’s effectiveness and lawfulness, the legislature has yet to take meaningful action.
However, there may be hope on this front. Skorup, who pointed out that the Mackinac Center hasn’t yet weighed in on the registry issue, said that he has started hearing about it, “so I would assume that something will start at least getting discussed legislatively.”
“I think people get very, very nervous when they talk about [reforming the registry], so it's important to have a very careful conversation where the people who have the data are able to explain that this is something that would be good for victims,” LaGrand told Daily Kos.
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.