 We're happy to have you with us. I'm Tom Ivaco with the Center for local state and urban policy also known as close-up I'm happy to welcome you on behalf of the Ford School and close-up to Wild Hall for today's event This is sure to be an engaging discussion on one of the most important policy topics facing the state of Michigan today reform in our correction system I'd like to point out that we will have time at the end of the panel discussion for question and Questions and answer with the audience. We have Some cards and pencils placed around the auditorium if you have a question Please write it down on one of the cards and then hold your hand up We'll have some people come by to pick up those cards from you Today's event is co-sponsored by close-up and the Ford School and has been organized by professors Jeffrey Morinoff and David Harding from the University of Michigan as well as Jeffrey Padden from Public Policy Associates, Incorporated Mr. Padden is serving as the moderator today, and he will introduce the rest of the panelists, but it's my pleasure to first introduce mr. Padden Jeffrey Padden is the founder and president of Public Policy Associates a Firm that works across the nation in public policy research development and evaluation Mr. Padden began working in corrections policy in 1975 when he was first elected to the Michigan House of Representatives He chaired the House Committee on Corrections for eight years and served on the judiciary committee Charing the subcommittee on sentencing guidelines For the past six years mr. Padden has led Public Policy Associates work as a partner with the Michigan Department of Corrections And the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency and the leadership of the Michigan prisoner reentry initiative the topic of today's discussion Mr. Padden's experience of over 30 years in public policy has included roles as deputy director of the Michigan Department of Commerce Director of the governor's human investment project in five terms in the Michigan House of Representatives He holds a bachelor's degree from Wayne State University and a master's degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard Please join me in welcoming mr. Jeffrey Padden. I am very happy to be a part of this Panel discussion today on the policy policy and politics of the Michigan prisoner reentry initiative and particularly To be doing it here in Ann Arbor at the Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy The folks who Participate in the work of this this school are uniquely interested in and committed to improving public policy in Michigan and around the country So it's a good thing that you're here to learn a little bit more about the Michigan prisoner reentry initiative as Promised we will be talking not just about the policy issues themselves, but also about the politics Transforming the way state government or any big state government agency does business is a stunningly difficult challenge And yet that is exactly the challenge that the MPRI has undertaken under the leadership of Governor Granholm and director Pat Caruso it's It's it's important that it has been framed and is in fact an initiative that's aimed at improving public safety my experience in corrections policy over the past 30 plus years has has shown me that there really is a sort of a false choice that have been set up between Doing the things that would prepare a prisoner for successful reintegration into the community or being tough on crime The Michigan prisoner reentry initiative Resolves that false choice by showing that those really are one in the same if we prepare people better to reintegrate into society Then we are in fact protecting the public better. I will Talk a little bit about and I will give you a bit of an overview of of the prisoner reentry initiative But before I do that I want to let you know who are the members of this very illustrious and well qualified panel Pat Caruso has been a very creative Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections I'm not going to read the the bios that that you were handed as you walked in in the door But I'll I'll tell you what I really know about these people Pat has been willing to take risks and it requires a risk taker to undertake the kind of a profound Transformation that the department has been undergoing in the past seven years and the policy Apparatus that surrounds it. So what we have in Pat Caruso is a leader Who has been unafraid of taking on the the challenges of making that big powerful transformation? Which involves not just changing the written policies, but changing attitudes changing culture Re-educating how many workers 16,000 currently Down to 16,000 employees of the Department of Corrections every single one of them has to learn what's different About the Michigan prisoner reentry initiative. So Pat has been the kind of leader who would take on that challenge in Representative Alma Wheeler Smith and John Proust we have Republican and a Democrat in the opposite order. Let's see if I can keep that straight Democratic chair of the house appropriation subcommittee on Corrections and the Republican vice chair of that committee together They are responsible for shaping A good portion of the budget decisions they they sometimes consult with the Senate on that I guess but at least on the house side they are the two leaders who are responsible for Shaping the the the funding decisions and of course funding funding dramatically affects policy You've heard that bipartisanship and collaboration are dead in the Michigan legislature Alma and John are living breathing evidence that that's not quite true I have watched them collaborate over the last several years to learn more about the policy issues involved involved in the MPRI and to Try to figure out how the legislature can play a constructive role in Supporting the transformation that Pat and and the governor have been have been proposing and finally on the panel is Peter Luke and I've known Peter Luke for a long time And I told him a little while ago that it's hard for me to think of him as the grizzled veteran reporter since I Ran across you first many many years ago, but Peter is is a Very astute observer of the Lansing policy and political scene So having Peter as a member of this panel Let's let's all of you and all of us take a step back from from what? Pat and Alma and John are deeply embroiled in every single day and Tell you what he sees from that outside perspective So that's our that's our panel and I think we are all very fortunate to have them with us today a Quick bit of history about the MPRI this was one of Governor Granholm's initial policy initiatives and It in fact she had embraced it prior to becoming governor The planning for this began in her very first year in office in fact within a few months of Governor Granholm taking office and The first real efforts around implementation took place less than two years later It's important to understand MPRI is an evidence-based practice. That means it's based on research That's been done all around the country over the past 20 years We were never able to invent Anything like the MPRI when I was a member of the legislature because the research base simply wasn't there to justify a major Retooling of corrections such as this it's organized into three phases the in-prison phase Which is the getting ready phase the going-home phase which connects? community With prisons in a way that's profoundly different than than used to be the case Used to be that the prison walls didn't just keep prisoners in it kept everyone else out The staying home phase is is the process of making sure that all all of the progress toward reducing risk while folks are in prison Continues once folks are in the community. I Mentioned that Pat Crusoe has presided over these profound cultural changes and it is not easy for folks who have been Employed at the Department of Corrections for 10 20 30 years saying well, gee next Monday morning We're going to be doing business differently big challenge and takes a lot of effort a lot of planning a lot of preparation it is really Amazing for me to stand here after being involved in the MPRI since 2003 and say it is now a statewide initiative With 18 regions serving all 83 counties and that every prisoner who is Who comes into the Michigan prisons is touched by the MPRI? There is a strong focus on employment readiness because employment is one of the one of the factors that really affects the likelihood that that somebody will be able to successfully reintegrate into the community and that employment readiness is supported by the close collaboration between the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative and Michigan's employment delivery system The MPRI has gone from zero to serving About 11,000 prisoners per year. That's everybody who comes in the front door. They all get What's referred to as a compass assessment which assesses? The risks and strengths of each prisoner Transition accountability plans are then built based on those specific risks and Those plans guide the service delivery in prison and out into the community over time everybody who's released will be a part of the MPRI and That will amount to something like 12,000 prisoners per year and They won't all get the same thing. This is not a one-size-fits-all Program at all. In fact the MPRI is most effective in serving In reducing the risk posed by by moderate and high-risk prisoners The MPRI is a complete system change. So it really requires everybody to be involved the the promise made by Governor Granholm was one of the important strengths of this initiative and And very complimentary to that is that is that the governor had exactly the right team to implement it in Pat Crusoe and former deputy director Dennis Schrantz and a director Crusoe's top management team They have all been Unrelenting in moving this thing from from zero to a hundred in a very quick period of time The fact that it's driven by evidence of what reduces recidivism I think is one of the things that gives it credibility if we were just talking about Providing services to be nice to prisoners. I think we know what the results would be in terms of its sustainability within the legislature and the public so It is a state-level strategy That focuses on public safety but provides within a broad framework lots of local flexibility and leadership There have been there's preliminary evidence of what works We are still not to the point where we can establish a firm causal relationship between What the MPRI is doing and the results that are being achieved? But all the preliminary indications are very positive It used to be that one out of two prisoners would go back to prison within 24 months now That's more like one out of three. That's a huge increase a huge improvement and that means that there are over 2,000 prisoners Who would have come back who would have been expected to come back who didn't that translates into real crimes that did not happen? the prison population is down dramatically and That translates into huge cost savings for the state of Michigan or will over time There are a number of other indications of the kind of success that the MPRI has has enjoyed and and over time we expect that to Continue to grow the preliminary the prior research indicated that for for medium and high-risk prisoners Results as good as a 50% reduction in in return to prison rate is possible We haven't got there yet with the MPRI But the MPRI is really the first effort in the whole country to integrate lots of different practices at the in-prison level the transition Point and the community level To pull together all of all of those Practices into one big system change. So with that I do want to turn to our panel And we'll start with Pat Caruso Pat is the director of the the department I know everybody is eager to eager to hear what the MPRI looks like from your point of view Thank you very much Jeff and thank you to the university for again hosting this discussion I Often talk about re-entry as an opportunity that grew from crisis and the crisis was an incredible economic crisis which struck our state in 2001 ahead of most of the rest of the country and It caused us to stand back and look at what was going on and that led into obviously the Election of a new governor Jeff mentioned the governor came in with this already on her radar And so I've been fortunate to have been part of this from the very start been the director now for seven years and Was actually the deputy director of the prison system at the time of the election I'm not sure we would have gotten here. We certainly wouldn't be here now had that crisis not occurred We were at a point where the Department of Corrections budget Consumed 25% of the general fund of the state of Michigan one in three state employees was just not sustainable and we had gotten there really the way Almost every other state got there because what happened in Michigan was just like every other state We're through a series of Policy decisions sometimes driven by politics, but but I honestly would say oftentimes driven by good intentions but good intentions not based on Evidence that those policies would actually make any difference in terms of making people safer But through the implementation of a lot of policies which became law our prison population started to Just go through the roof and that's what happened all around the country and so we Created scenarios and communities all over this state where we were the the main employer You know, I'm from the upper peninsula and we have prisons all across the UP where Good people come to work every day and work in our prisons. They didn't create this scenario They're just part of it But they do rely on those jobs in those communities rely on this job and that story is something that has been repeated All over the United States in Michigan We decided we had to make a change before most other states made that decision and We did that initially because we couldn't afford to do it, but one of the things we realized very early on is that the way we were Running the Department of Corrections the way we were incarcerating people the way we looked at What our focus was we were not making the citizens of our state safer They were not safer because as Jeff mentioned one and two came back who got out They were not safer if we're spending two billion dollars of the general fund running a prison system Monies that could be available for something else whether it's public education or health care or housing or transportation Whatever it is things that may make a bigger difference police on the streets That that we weren't holding up our end of the bargain if our mission is to protect the public And so we made a decision to change how we ran the department and to change the culture in the department and to start focusing on success and start measuring our success based on what happened as people went through that system and when they got out and That's what we're here to talk about today and some of the underlying pieces of that the political part of it Which is very interesting. I have a book I often refer to which talks about how over a period of decades our country converted from a military industrial-based economy to a prison industrial-based economy and Though it sounds very offensive and I was offended when I first heard it I will tell you there's a lot of truth to that and Though we certainly do not Overtly incarcerate people to provide jobs. We have created an economy that relies on those big prisons and the numbers of people we incarcerate to provide jobs and There's tremendous moral implications of that But it is the circumstances we found ourselves in as we decided to change the direction We were going and as we decided to put policies in place in our system that would result in a lower Population in our prison system. We had to face the politics of what that would mean And so all of these communities around the state who in many cases we had forced to take prisons We put them in the communities who either wanted them because they were desperate for jobs or they did not have the political Ability to stop us. So we forced those prisons in Now loved their prisons now. We're saying hey, we're successful our populations dropping. I can guarantee you There are not any communities in Michigan who think success looks like you're closing their biggest employer And and that was the message that we have had to deliver I to deliver I've delivered that message personally in many communities in the state the politics of that are very difficult I have faced employees on Picket lines whose prison was closing and whose jobs were being eliminated who would have a job But perhaps an hour from where they worked Faced employees holding signs which read such disturbing things as blood on your hands Jenny referring to the governor and Talking to me about keeping with them at every minute a binder with the information on every poorly who failed and I always say to them if you're gonna keep a binder on every poorly who failed I hope you have a stack to the ceiling of the thousands who've succeeded because we really can't talk about one Without the other because this is the ultimate human business Our detractors will always say the default argument is always Don't do this. Something bad will happen I'm gonna give you a clue Something bad will happen Something bad happens No matter what we do we can eliminate parole. We can cut it in half. We can increase it in my world Something bad will happen If we are going to structure our lives around a fear of something bad will happen We should have all stayed home today because something bad could have happened before we got here Something bad might happen yet while we're here or on our way home We have to be strong enough and courageous enough to make policy based on what evidence tells us and what really protects people Not a fear of something bad will happen Interestingly, there's also been the political pushback from groups who are our natural advocates Though I think that many of the advocates have been pleased to see the cultural change in our department and the focus on success There are also many individuals who are frustrated by perhaps things not taking Place as quickly as they would like sometimes a belief that I Often hear that we have an incentive to keep our population up Because the federal government gives us X amount of dollars for every prisoner We have incarcerated that is not true if anyone believes that to be true that is not true But I do hear that I have had people who are advocating for a smaller population Tell me that we intentionally release the people we believe are the most dangerous and the most likely to fail because then We'll be able to say see we told you we tried but it doesn't work We can go back to the good old days of a big prison system I will tell you those are not the good old days and If we go back to having to refill those prisons we have failed Three years ago exactly this week three years ago. We hit our highest population ever It was fifty one thousand five hundred and fifty four prisoners today. We have forty four thousand nine hundred people incarcerated in Michigan We are down to about seventeen hundred women we've reduced the population of women incarcerated in Michigan by about 30% very significant reduction in The numbers of women who are in prison in Michigan the issue in Michigan is length of stay People do a lot of time in Michigan going back to the policies I talked about whether it's because of consecutive sentencing you must complete this sentence before you finish that one whether it's because of The long indeterminate sentencing we have in Michigan. We have people doing one day to life Whether it's because of the fear of being accused of early release something I hear all the time Parole is not early release We are in a system where judges sentenced you to a minimum sentence The max is set by statute based on the crime judge has no discretion over that Parole is not an early release Not a day goes by that I don't read about this huge early release program I'm running in the state of Michigan. No one's getting out early. We have no legal authority to get anyone out early What we have done is change our culture to focus on collaboration Inside our prison inside our communities to focus on success We have made a decision in the worst economy in the country to reinvest one third of our savings into the types of activities and Opportunities which the evidence tells us will will allow offenders to be more successful Additional programming in prisons additional beds in our communities for those who need some kind of residential treatment additional Tethers GPS tethers where the parole board feels comfortable with someone outside of prison if they have that resource We've hired 200 additional agents in the last year. So we're reinvesting our money something other states are not doing We're trying to focus on what really makes people safer and making decisions based on risk not making decisions just based on emotion or Based on fear and especially fear of being wrong because as I said something bad will happen These are human beings we're all human beings on every side of this equation a hundred percent of those for whom we're responsible or convicted felons and So so that is what we in our business deal with every day people ask me every day Don't you live in fear of the one bad crime? This is a business where we're that that is That what you're always one phone call away from that happening But if we're afraid of that happening then we're in the wrong business We got to find something else to do because I would suggest that the citizens of this state Look to us to make the decisions that make them safer, and I am 100 percent convinced 100 percent convinced What we are doing this state is Making our citizens safer in our community safer and as we are able to successfully reduce that population and reinvest those monies in our communities in activities and behaviors that make community safer Then we have come full circle. I tell people frequently It may be an opportunity that grew from crisis But if we were today to not have ever experienced that crisis if today Michigan wins the equivalent of the lottery and money is never going to be an issue forever I would not change the direction. We're going because we're going the right direction and I am convinced we're doing the right thing and I'm going to close my remarks with that and Turn it to my fellow panelists, and we'll be happy to take questions later in the presentation Thank You director Caruso I'm representative Alma Wheeler Smith, and I'm in my 14th year in the Michigan Legislature and I have a couple of different perspectives on Correction subcommittee we were in a period of Let's keep the men as long as we can Maximum sentences were being served and what I learned early is that 95% of these folks are coming out And they need to come out into a community with some skills and some abilities behind them that allow them to come out safely and at that point in time and when I was in the Senate it was in the mid and late 90s we were not doing a lot of rehabilitation and Prisoners were not coming out with the skills the training or the education That they needed to turn things around for themselves and their families when they entered the community and One day as I was serving on the when I served on the county commission The sheriff of Washtenaw County came to me and looked me dead in the eye and said I am not the mental health institution for the state of Michigan, and I thought what is he talking about and So he went on to elaborate he said you know almost a third of the people that I'm seeing in the county jail have mental health issues and We are incarcerating them instead of putting them into a health facility where they can get the real help that they need Yes, they've committed crimes. Yes I our fellow citizens have called and said there's this guy and I feel threatened because he's walking around my house muttering and you have to do something about him so he ends up in jail after a number of those those arrest and after a number of incidents sometimes Assaultive They would end up in the prison system of the state of Michigan with no mental health help We were incarcerating for a long time as the director pointed out and It wasn't doing us any good. We would return people with mental health problems back to the streets of their communities Without any backup The MPRI program started out in the community at release and some of us would argue that that was the wrong point Jada started with intake and worked people through but as the director pointed out We were in an economic crunch and we needed to deal with the people who were coming out We needed to make sure that they had an opportunity for employment for housing and for health care and MPRI was designed in its pilot phases to have some community or each of the five communities Addressed certain specific issues that they thought were key to their communities. Some took on health care Some took on housing and others took on employment Let's see what happens if we can tackle a specific area of need for the returning population The evidence base that we've garnered over the last few years when MPRI has been in place has shown that it really is a combination of all three working in each community and We are trying to get a program together that actually has those three threads at work as we try to weave a safety net for people who are returning to the community the Yes, people are gonna fail when they come out prior to MPRI we had some spectacular failures of our parolees and They were headline issues. I was on the school board in the South lion community school district And we had three young people murdered in Oakland County by a parolee That was a tragedy for the community, but it was something that could not have been foreseen by the parole board Certainly was addressed as quickly as possible, but the legislature's response was a Lack of understanding of the fact that we are in fact dealing with human beings and that there will be a Spectacular failure which becomes an anecdotal reason that we wrap public policy around So we took that one incident and all parolees stopped. It was Fascinating look at the line that the department will often show us of how parolees went up and then suddenly there's a plunge well when you see that plunge there was one anecdotal incident and There you go. No parole is happening and then finally the parole board gains a little courage in the legislature backs off a bet and You see the parole rate go back up We can't in good conscience and in good public policy approach our Issues in our policy with an anecdotal incident that makes us respond with lasting policy changes that have done Very little for public safety, but a whole lot for increasing the cost of prison system in the state of Michigan. I Would like to tell you I remember when the population was 7,000, but I don't I started working when the population was probably at about 15,000 and we have seen a dramatic increase because of policy decisions that were made on length of sentence and the fact that we wanted to punish we were tough on crime and We had to be tougher than our neighboring states Michigan has the long the the more difficult sentencing guidelines in the country and We really are not Flexible about what we do our parole board as the director pointed out has been given some Confidence in the decisions they make because we have some Evidence-based instruments in the system at use so that they can look at what the prisoner has done in the way of Programming and education while in the system Whether or not they can be successful on the outside by the coping skills that they've learned on the inside and that they're able to demonstrate But We have to change the policy that is behind the length of sentence and we have in the last few years begun an effort to Look at the sentence and guidelines and reexamine them and make a decision Senate and house on whether or not adjustments can be made in those sentencing guidelines We're not finding great success in that area. So we look at another approach You know, do we offer good time for prisoners? We canceled that out and with it when a couple of good programs, but cancelling out good time meant that people were unable to Get out early. They could only get out past their minimum release date So we were holding people longer yet again the change that we're looking for in the good time or 85% Mac minimum would let us Prisoners from the system and prisoners who are safer to be released safer for public safety Because they pose less of a risk than those who are past their earliest release date who have been held in the system Rejected by the parole board one to four times But are still beyond their earliest release date and become those individuals that we tell the department you have to look at to find that next release cohort from and The department would have a lot more success for the community and for public safety if they could look at people who are at 85% of their minimum, but the comeback is we have truth in sentencing here in Michigan Well, there are a whole lot of states every state in the state in the country has truth in sentencing But what we find is that Michigan is truthful at a hundred percent and thirty six I believe other states are truthful at eighty five percent and the federal government is truthful at eighty five percent it becomes a rhetorical question of What is truth and truth is what you tell people it is and if we tell people truth is eighty five percent of a sentence Then that you know should fulfill the rhetorical question of what is truth in sentencing We had challenging economics that began this process toward the Michigan prisoner reentry initiative, and then we were hit with calamity Jane in terms of a national collapse in the economy which exacerbated where we are and How quickly we are looking at changes in public policy? But we aren't changing in haste to create a more Dangerous climate for the citizens in the community. We are acting again with what we believe is good evidence-based Information that lets us make decisions on who can leave the system and who should stay in longer The more confidence we can give our parole board in making that decision is certainly helpful to the outcome So we have increased the youth the use of GPS systems, and we have gone from GPS that is not real-time to real-time GPS so that our Parole agents have the opportunity to see exactly where somebody is and at any moment in time to know when they are violating Boundaries that are put around people that they should never see never talk to And that has given the parole board and the communities a lot more confidence in who is in the community it The NPR I program has certainly created challenges for communities in that have facilities As the director pointed out we assigned some facilities to certain communities, and then others were you know Begging us to take them for jobs I was with the director when we were closing a camp in the UP and then went with one of my colleagues on a tour of the Prisons in the UP and the hostility that I encountered on that the early prison section we did three was interesting because they were sure we were there to announce the closure and We finally allayed that concern and said no We're here to see how you're working with MPRI how it's working for you What kinds of changes you think we need to make there are some changes? I would still like to see an MPRI and one of them is Having a recommendation come from the people in the prison system who work closely with the prisoners I think the guards and the social workers and the medical staff are key components of the A time in prison that people spend and certainly have an opportunity to recognize who is ready To be released and who should probably never be released and to make that recommendation to the parole board How that's done to protect their privacy so that they're not Creating a hostile environment for their own workplace is a discussion. I will have with the director, but The there are a number of things I think we can continue to do and we will continue to work on as we Move through our phase of the last budget process for me Hopefully not for representative prose I'm John prose state representative from Michigan's Great Southwest for those of you who weren't aware I 94 doesn't end at about exit 75 It keeps going all the way to the border and along Lake Michigan along the border of Indiana, too so I have the good fortune of living in in the Great Southwest and Can take this discussion in any number of ways you've been given a very good overview obviously from the director and Jeff Thank you for inviting us and the good good folks at Gerald our Ford school It's great to be here as a great Spartan grad also, so I appreciate that very much We did joke Peter and I on the way in it He says by this is the time to be here at the University of Michigan during the final four, right? Isn't that what she said exactly we commented we commented and we're not quite sure what time the that's exactly right That's right. Did you like that? That's how legislators put it in the in the reporters mouth We can take it in any number of ways the discussion I think what I'll do is is provide a perspective that I have being in my third and final term in the House of Representatives And having spent now three years in my fourth year with representative Smith as my chairman on the appropriation subcommittee for corrections and and I Made the comment earlier today We were all together with the director and many of the folks from the department as it related to Looking at the Senate's past version of the budget and beginning the work that Alma just mentioned We're we're beginning now in the House of Representatives based upon the budget itself And I jokingly said we took in a lot of information day. It's like drinking through a fire hose With the depth and the breadth of this particular budget the two billion dollar budget are just under the two billion dollar budget that we have Because it is so complicated From my perspective as a legislator I came in to this budget in the very early days of MPRI's rollout, which at that point was just simply a pilot program a pilot program in eight counties My home county of Barion was one of those counties that was participating in it and was encouraged By the early wraparound services, you know Barion County has has several communities that bring an awful lot of folks back to our Our home communities after they've served time in prison and one of the early lessons I learned was is that we in aggregate parole or Release the entire population of our prison system about every three years are there about I think is how the numbers go And and as Alma had said 95 percent get out. We're gonna have them back in our community. So the question is What are we doing to ensure? The level of public safety that we would like to see and what are we doing to ensure that it isn't just a bus ticket home And good luck But how can we make sure that? Those folks are given the best service as possible what that has done in a couple of different ways in our local communities is create Some partnerships with agencies and providers who can assist in that process What a novel concept and it's great that we're doing that I think community corrections was probably envisioned to be that in the in the previous days When community corrections was something different than what it is today But the challenge that that has come from that though is that in this era of declining revenues Yet increasing responsibilities and goals and objectives to take care of folks in our communities who are finding themselves in hard times that cost shift is has impacted our local providers pretty significantly as They try to assist the department and the parole board when they send folks back to our communities in those wraparound services Alma and I just today in fact after we finished the hearing spent a few moments quietly after the reporters jumped us And we discussed a couple of those challenges in our communities Transportation is one of the very first challenges of course that many communities face Unlike some of our larger urban areas I live in more of a rural area if you if you had to call it that and we don't have very good transportation services available to folks Who don't have driver's licenses and can't drive or they don't have access to vehicles? and then when talking today with or in this past couple of months with the director of the Michigan Works agency that has Baryon Cass and Van Buren Southwest Michigan area and is a very good supporter of MPRI Provides many of the services for those particular individuals coming back to our community When they do come back to helping them to achieve a skill level necessary to even enter the workforce again He is finding that of the 511 Current numbers of parolees and Baryon Cass and Van Buren County. He's able to place only about 10% in jobs Now when MPRI was a pilot in Baryon County We were he was placing anywhere between 50 and 60% he said and any number of reasons why the 30 to 40 to 50% were not being placed But we're at a time right now when we know that there is a glut of employees with certain degrees of talent Those those folks who are unemployed today are competing now for those jobs and competing pretty fiercely for those jobs and At the same time we're finding ourselves with many more people coming out of our prison system with felony convictions and Now seeking those jobs and also it takes a pretty courageous employer these days to decide that they'd take an MPRI individual or an individual who in fact is is Coming out of our prison system. So we're facing many significant challenges and I think threats I think a threat that also exists, which is why Alma and I worked very closely to inform our incoming freshman representatives of What MPRI was and is and as it continues to Become a part of our community operations in all of our counties all 83 counties. We worked closely together to try with with our friends at Public Policy Associates to to ensure that we get some information to them because in term limits folks People are turning over all the time. They don't have nearly the same information or understanding of what it is That's that's happening in our communities and what's happening in the Department of Corrections I'll remind you Even after three full years. I'm just barely dangerous enough to understand what's going on and That has shifted almost entirely the public policy debate in our legislature making it all the more difficult for representative Smith and others to pursue The policy discussion as it relates to good time Because it's very easy to just simply take the sound bite of You mean to tell me ten years isn't ten years I'm gonna run into them in the grocery store in three in seven years or seven and a half years and There is a very strong push on the prosecutors of Michigan to say Absolutely, not we're not gonna overturn good time Why would we do that and then tell our victims and victims families? Sorry That isn't the truth and as Alma said the truth is what we tell them well at this point We're telling them ten years if that is in fact the minimum sentence So we find ourselves really with an educational process for all of the new representatives and senators who make these public policy decisions So I give a great deal of credit to the department for working in this very challenging time This is one department of many Obviously in the state that has an awful lot to deal with but we Can come at this from a very succinct and direct position that we agree on wholeheartedly regardless of Republican or Democrat Which is how can we make sure that that the services that are provided whether in the prison or outside of the prison? Allow for the best opportunities for public safety and for the success of that person Coming back into our community as a citizen Contributing to the benefits that our state provides Clearly those are the goals and objectives that the Department of Corrections has and that we have as public policymakers The hope and goal would be that we continue to educate our colleagues About how we can get to the end of that process with success and it's not going to be an easy situation In particular the greatest threat is exactly what both director Caruso and representative Smith just said There will be a bad thing that happens and it will likely point to a parolee and quite possibly a parolee on MPRI And when that happens the contraction in the legislature is Likely to make it even more challenging from a public policy perspective, which is why the education is so critical today So I'll leave it at that point and I'm sure the questions will lead us in many new directions And it's great to be on the panel and be here today. Thank you The state senator who's Running for this year Harry Gast From St. Joe said in 1988 that prison costs were are eating us alive Harry was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee at that point In 1986 the Department of Corrections budget was 389 million and in the budget he was dealing with an FY 89 it had grown to 633 million And we all know now, it's a billion nine and in terms of the media's role in all of that there is an axiom in journalism particularly in the assignment desk at TV stations particularly in probably Detroit if it bleeds it leads and Crime stories have a Real hold on the public's imagination in a lot of ways and they're obviously ratings grabbers another tenant of journalism is You know what do you put in the lead who what where when how and why most crime stories don't have a why to them? Lot of bad things happen If there is a why or if a why can be applied to a story that story has legs So why did a crime? Occur well a perpetrator committed it, but how was he allowed to commit it? Well, he was let out of prison early through a special program Well, that turns the story into something more than just a crime but bureaucratic culpability and it allows Journalism to lay blame or to explain why something happened in a case and when they otherwise couldn't And there I've been you can you can look at those specific stories and What what that has done to the state budget? It's I think that that explains billions in costs Over the last 30 years going back to 1984 when I think one or two parolees murdered meridian township police officer And an East Lansing woman that was in the Blanchard administration and that set off a huge wave of prison construction in 1992 Leslie Allen Williams murdered four Girls and that set off another round of of construction, and that's how we got to a prison population of 51,000 We not only denied parole, but we built a lot of prisons in this state And I think what I Think what happened in that case was At the time of the Williams case Michigan's economy was growing We wound up with 3.8 percent unemployment rate by 1999 if you can imagine that right now and so You know general fund revenue was growing at about 8% a year and so I think So the state could afford it could afford to build prisons it could afford to Keep prisons prisoners in prison longer And still provide state aid to municipalities reasonable amount of state aid to universities K-12 education and and the like in fact I asked then governor Engler in his third term What he would thought of the prospects that correction spending would ever exceed the amount of monies the state spends on higher state a higher education as California had had done in the late 90s. He said oh that'd be terrible Well as we found out in the decade of the two thousand two thousands when the economy When we began shedding what will probably be about eight hundred and sixty nine hundred thousand jobs this decade Everything got cut but prisons You know you look at what's cost of tuition here now compared to two thousand. It's obviously higher You know municipalities claim they've been shorted three billion dollars In the statutory revenue sharing payments over the course of that decade we're down two thousand law enforcement personnel across the state And I think an interesting thing happened. It was probably in 2007 and I think that was kind of a sea change The budget shut down the state shut down for the first time and they raised taxes and That fall they raised taxes on business by seven hundred million dollars to the new Michigan business tax and I think what's happened since then is that the business community has become engaged and There was a second point of view to You know prison quote-unquote reform In the past any attempts to shave the prison population or make policy changes Was basically shut down because Those you know legislators properly feared that a bad outcome Would be harmful to their political careers and now what you're seeing is that the business community is playing an active role in saying that the 50,000-plus prison population In the Midwest state where the Midwest average is closer to in the low 30,000s was simply economically unsustainable and So you have you know, you have hearings now in Lansing where they're talking about You know presumption of parole at a hundred percent Senate Republicans want to apply that to new inmates only The Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce testifies. No, you have to apply it to all prisoners So I think that you know editorial boards are much More inclined to support policies like the MPRI And I think It's that the problem right now is that it's subject to The next bad case in a lot of ways and in part because the administration hasn't explained the policy And I think one of the things they needed I think the public is prepared to to accept it If you pull people and say Ask them should the mentally mentally ill be in prison. They'd probably say no Should parolees Is it better for parolee to be able to read or not to read and they would probably say It's yeah, it's probably a good thing that they didn't know how to read So I think there's if you break it up into in the different parts. I think there's broad public support You know for policies like the MPRI I Think one of the issues is that in the case of term limits, it's going to be subject to change By a next administration You know, that's one of the issues involving the the parole policies right now It's it's it's executive decision-making that the next governor could Could rescind as as the previous governor did by you know certain parole board policy changes You know, I think some of that needs to be put in a statute and You know, I think one of the things that You know, the public needs to be Kind of made aware that it's kind of like a holistic system and prisons aren't much different than any other kinds of institutions You know almost educational they are educational institutions, you know, you go into prison You'll learn a lot of new things And you'll and you'll learn how to do better the things that got you in there in the first place So I think if you explain the public say well, what are we doing here? What are we doing with this program? What are we doing in prison? We're essentially remediating the failures some failures of society in general and You know We did another poll and you say well should the dropout age be 16 or 18? I think most people would say well 18 And so I think the public understands that you know a High a minimum high school education is a good thing and so if a kid doesn't have that it should be provided somehow You know job skills, you know all that stuff You know, it's interesting that If you Yeah, there's a number It works across purposes I mean we talked about the mentally ill in prison and the department of community health budget that the Senate passed last week Contains a 53 million dollar cut to non-medicaid community mental health services So when when people involved in the MPR process come out come out of prison and through that process You know, they're gonna be able to get mental health treatment. Are they gonna be able to get job training? and so I I think unless it is Kind of a sustained effort is made to educate the public as to what this is not only that it saves money But it will keep you safer the better because I think that You know a new governor Is probably most vulnerable in their first 18 months two years in office and that's when the perception of them is largely set and so You know something does bad happen You know the next governor and the next legislature is gonna be really inclined to close the doors and You know what they don't they don't have to build prisons You know because they've got lots of empty prisons out there to refill and You know, it's but but I think there is a there is a sea change and you know I think the business community understands that They're never gonna get a tax cut unless they figure out a way to reduce You know the cost of government and the cost that the rest of the cost of government has been shaved down so much in the last decade that prisons are really the only place you can look at Thank you to the panel and Representative Alma Wheeler Smith has a Command performance as as you all know in this town Representative Smith is running for governor and She's about to head off to an endorsement meeting. So we wish you well with that. Thank you so much. I do apologize. Thank you, John 20 minutes left Thank you, and thanks for participating Representative Andy Kendraebus there you Andy Freshman legislator from my neck of the woods represents part of the district that I represented in ancient times Thank you for being part of this and we may turn to you as these questions if there's a question you want to deflect John Kendraebus is great. I'll take care of it for all of us We do have about 20 minutes to go and we have a stack of questions here If anybody else has a question write it down on a card and pass it to the edge and buying will pick it up and bring it down to me And and so to the panelists I asked that you try to be reasonably succinct in your answers be complete But succinct so that we can get through as many of these as possible Let's let's start with this. This is a pretty profound question The questioner says our state's prosecutors seem obsessed with confine confinement and fear any action which reduces our state's prison population That being the case What chance do any of us have us broadly speaking? To affect policy change in this direction And we'll throw that to path. I'll start on that I I guess I don't agree that they're obsessed with that In fact, we have many prosecutors who are actively involved at the community level with our reentry work who have been Fabulous to work with in terms of looking at policies within their own communities But but it is fair to say that prosecutors are have a different role in the system Their job is on the front end there They are they are they deal with prosecuting people sending them to prison So you're dealing with a different piece of that and and I think part of it is excuse me prosecutors like Many others you know run for their jobs every four years on a partisan basis and they're subject to The the feelings in the sense from their communities and and those prosecutors who feel they have the support of their community and the ability to stand up and Not have to to spout a certain rhetoric will do that and you see that happen from many of our longer term Prosecutors those who come from a community where they may not feel they can do that aren't because that's that's the process They're representing the people in their community but I mean I deal with prosecutors a lot as a group have very good relationship with them and and As as a group I know they support much of what we're doing in fact they their association testified in support of the legislation which is looking at capping sentences at a hundred and twenty percent with a presumption of parole at a hundred percent they support that package What MPRI is or or perhaps there is no perception of what MPRI is then the prosecutors really have no Need to educate the public about it. That's not their role in the process as the director said She's she's absolutely right about that and they run for office So if if there isn't a direct impact Locally with with the public perception of the successes or perhaps the pitfalls that need additional assistance in the local community to provide Transportation let's say and in the communities in Benton Harbor Southwest Michigan Coloma Water Elite where I represent Then the prosecutor really doesn't have a whole lot of need nor cause to want to try to push that along if you will That's not to say that prosecutor Cotter in this case isn't interested in seeing success with MPRI In fact, he is and is very closely allied with the sheriff of Baryon County Paul Bailey Who is very interested in the success of that program then also has concerns? Which may come up in our conversation today, but I think I think Peter said it best It's a matter of education in the local communities in the process is behalf That's much more on the side of of those of us on the back side of it If you will the public policy side and the corrections parole side Yeah, I think some of the objections really are fall on the whole issue of accelerator parole and and The whole idea is was to get that down to a range between 100 and 200 I think the prosecutors are get concerned about specific cases But what's what's their alternative? I mean are they saying that well, no we should keep them in at I'm broads broadly speaking hundred and fifty percent of their other minimum 175 percent So I think from a policy standpoint, they really haven't Articulated that I think most of them do agree that You know it doesn't you know make much sense to keep somebody and you know for for years longer than then they Need to be but I think you know under the old policies that did make their life easier You know, I mean when people weren't getting out You know, they're probably pretty happy about that and so any change any change to that you know it's gonna gonna raise alarm bells and The role of the prosecutors of play has certainly been one of the central elements of the politics of the MPRI in a variety of ways Both positive and negative. Let's move on to another question If the MPRI leads to fewer prisoners, which means fewer prisons and fewer prison jobs How do you get buy-in from corrections employees and let's start with Pat Grusso on that? well that certainly is a challenge and The I challenge our employees. I say to our employees We do not incarcerate people to provide jobs and it's very difficult for Corrections employees if you are a prison based corrections employee We have grown on the field side If you look at where the increases have been in our budget and our operations with 33% increase on the field side We've hired more agents and we've put more money into the community But if you are someone who came out of the prisons, which I did until I was the director I only worked in the prison system in our department You're very committed to that and you believe because you were always told that that I mean that's People are in there forever and then the longer you stay the more likely The community is to be safe And so that is an education Process in our part and it's something that we have undertaken Internally our department where we talk about this all the time. We've formalized it into training with our employees We want them to see the same Facts and statistics and evidence that we give to the legislators and to the public things like the research shows that there's no correlation between Length of stay and likelihood of reoffense staying an extra year or two doesn't make you more likely to succeed things like There's not a correlation between Misconduct in prison and I'm talking about not serious misconduct like serious assault But the run-of-the-mill misconducts we write like out of place and disobeying a direct order There's not any correlation between that and success on parole our employees need to know that Many of our employees get this I have employees contact me particularly correction officers all the time Saying here's someone the pro board ought to be looking at he or she is a waste of my tax dollars I wouldn't care if they live next door to me. I do hear that frequently Department and there's been a huge effort along those lines what about the reward system Do people who understand and embrace the MPRI? Find themselves more likely to be promoted and have successful careers and corrections these days, or is it neutral in that respect? Employees saying exactly that to me because I mean any smart person if you work in a business You look at what the bottom line of that business is and what the mission is and you understand where the future is and Certainly the future in our department for several years has been revolving around re-entry which I refer to as get out and stay out and those people who are able to conceptualize that and Operationalize it in what they do clearly have been more successful in our department Helping the MPRI succeed Their prison employees who have transitioned onto the field side because they see that as the future not just because their prism Was closing but because they saw that as something that was rewarding and the future of corrections in Michigan Okay, let's turn to representative prose How can we engage more Republican legislators to support policies that are supportive to prisoners and former offenders now? There's obviously an assumption behind that Right What what what is your sense about how your caucus views the MPRI relative to the Democratic caucus Is this beyond just you and representative Smith a partisan issue or not? I think it's probably less partisan like most everything else in the legislative process is much less partisan than what you read in the Front page of the newspaper. I think Peter did a good job of identifying The sensationalism is what leads if you will And the sensational arguments that we have over budgets and shutdowns and things like that Lead the news stories and legitimately so and are there tense and tensions absolutely. Are there tensions as it relates to good? Discussion about issues like this certainly there are I come at it from the perspective that education is the key to it and Certainly I asked an awful lot of questions of the director of the department of my colleagues It was mentioned that the prosecutors have challenges with some of the some of the discussion today good time legislation and so forth if we educate our colleagues about the the Impact the benefits the cost benefit analysis and trying our best to understand what a compass analysis of a prisoner is What does that work? What does that mean? It's mainly from a perspective of and I said in my opening statements to Jeff If we don't Educate ourselves of it. It's easier to take the perspective. No, thank you. Keep them all in and Term limits has had an impact on that and that's not the purpose of today's debate, but I'm suggesting to To all of us who are dealing with this particular issue that if if Legislators are coming in in the droves that they do because of term limits. They don't have near the same understanding of it Okay To Peter Luke Peter. I think you you said that the administration really hasn't explained the policy very effectively to the public in general Did I hear you right? Yeah, and I was thinking about it And then maybe we shouldn't call these policies anything. Maybe we should just kind of slowly shift direction and Because if you have Situation where you release say the legislature and acts a program where Instead of serving a hundred percent of your sentence if you behave behind bars Well, you'll serve 85 percent of your minimum Well, if somebody in that cohort goes out and again does something we'll all net policy will be blamed and it seems to me now that takes You know statutory change so you can't do that under the radar, but I think with MPRI You know, I think hopefully they can gradually just bake all this stuff into Into the system and so it isn't seem like a standalone policy, but it's more akin to well food clothing health care Okay, well, but in terms of helping to build a base of public understanding in an event like this might help But but what is the right strategy for the Department of Corrections and the legislature and the governor's office? To employ to connect with the mass media to get the message Out to the public Well, you know if you had a prison population that it was about the Midwest average You know tuition at the University of Michigan wouldn't be 11,000 for undergrad it might be 8,000 Right, so you want $3,000. I mean, I think all the folks in this room are on scholarship You know But you know you can't Or do you want a tax cut? Or do you want you know anything you want out of the budget? There's a fixed fixed cost to everything and You know is there is the level of altruism in the in the community But but this you know, I think you can take it at another level if you look like a community like Detroit, right? Everybody talks about all you know Most everybody here isn't gonna be a crime victim, you know But if you live in the city of Detroit, there's a much better chance You're gonna become a victim of crime, you know, or if you live in Flint or Saginaw, you know, you look at Flint Saginaw Pontiac and Another one, I mean, there's probably Detroit I'll have Nationally really extremely high crime rates and so from just a recidivism standpoint if Somebody's less likely to come out and commit a crime. I think that's how you sell it Why you know like Alma said you're gonna everybody's gonna get out, right? So what kind of person are you letting out if you can make the case? We're letting out a better person, right? Then they should support them. All right. Well, it's very easy to imagine In fact, you don't have to imagine it you can read it in the papers those stories of the horrendous crimes committed by parolees It's it's very easy to point to an individual who committed a crime against another individual and tell that story in the most vivid terms How do you tell the story about a crime that didn't happen and there have now been hundreds or possibly thousands of crimes that would have happened if not for the MPRI that did not take place so Can you tell a story through the media that says last night at 8 p.m. When Peter Luke drove into his driveway he got out of his car went into his house and was not mugged How do you make that a news story? Well, it's hard, you know I mean you can take a specific example of you know a human interest story a guy gets out of prison and you know Gets his associates degree and now he's working at a car dealer, you know, but that makes it That's not a story that makes it about the prisoner right doesn't make it about the victim who turned out not to be a victim Right, but that may be You're working together, isn't it? Yes, people want the sensationalism to some degree So I think that's one of the challenges that's faced in telling this story powerfully and publicly We're saying that the public is safer safer, but are you as an individual safer? How do you know that you're safer than you would have been otherwise? So maybe it's a challenge that just sits out there. I do want to go back to Pat Kruse. So Pat you made a passing comment about the prison industrial complex and That the notion of maintaining a large prison population simply to keep jobs is a moral issue now We did have a question from somebody went right to that point Is it is it cheaper for the state to house someone in prison or to potentially be adding them to the welfare? Roles and pick up the bill on any negative Externalities that that may result, you know, we're turning people loose into a bad economy Well, you know, why should they get the jobs instead of the the folks who haven't committed a crime? Talk about how that's a moral issue. Well clearly there is a lot of moral issues surrounding this You know, do we do we keep people in prison who are otherwise good candidates for parole because they don't have a job? You know, we're do we we're not running the the poor house It's so there are all kinds of issues there do we keep people in prison because if we don't keep them in prison the Prison will close and people will lose their jobs. I mean there's issues that we that revolve around that But the fact is that when we spend so much money to run a massive prison system There are dollars that would otherwise go into our economy that would be creating jobs for other people would be Reducing the cost of tuition would be all sorts of things out there And and it's something we have to face and I mean if there are people who need to be in prison until the day They die then they ought to be in prison until the day they die, but it's a but it's a smaller Number there's a there's a comment that I am widely credited with having made it's it's known around the country I actually stole this but I'm going to say it anyway, and that is that We need to decide who we are mad at and who we are afraid of and that prison beds ought to be saved for those individuals we are afraid of and Not those we are mad at and there may be people who went to prison and we were rightfully afraid of them But over a period of years changes have occurred in them And now we're just mad at them We have a lot of people in prison in this country and in this state and who stay in prison Because we're mad at them if we're willing to pay an average in Michigan of $32,000 a year to be mad at people I don't know it makes very good economic sense, and I don't think it makes good moral sense either Okay, now we only have a few more minutes. It's 526 and we finish at 530 So this will be the lightning round and I'll start with a really hard question What role does mental illness play in the rate of recidivism and how does the MPRI address that? And I'll make that a toss-up and John or Pat can grab it. I probably it's significant I know that I know that it is very significant And I think that's one of the significant challenges we face is getting our arms around how we address that population And the same can be said for drug Drug offenders drug courts and so forth or an attempt to do that plus some in reach on mental health and drug Addressing some some of the drug concerns that we have in the prison system, too Representative prose is right our inability to come to terms with these issues in our communities Results in many people coming to prison who otherwise would not have if you look at mental illness the ability to access Care through local community health boards based on what the laws say The inability to do that results in behaviors that land people in prison when you're in prison There actually is a mental health system It's not a good place to access that but there there is a system that's structured Getting people back out into that is a challenge. I will say one area where reentry has Really succeeded are the numbers that deal with Individuals formerly incarcerated mentally ill who have transitioned successfully back to the community It's probably one of our highest success rates that we've seen. Okay another quick question Doesn't earn time or time off for good behavior or for doing positive things in prison and the MPRI go hand in hand If so, how do they fit together? Earned time isn't is a debate that has not been fleshed out nearly as well as it should be at this point in time It's been easy to to have an encampment and It's probably pretty fair to say it's a Republican encampment and a Democratic encampment at this point in time And the argument has been that earned time Is is the best way for us to reduce the costs in our prison system because we'll be letting a lot of people out that should go Up or get out at 85 percent or thereabouts I would say that and in fact it was partially discussed today that that debate has not been well fleshed out at this point in time I suspect that we're going to continue to try to thread together how a good time would be successful for an MPRI But remember we're dealing with a community And other interest groups that may not have as much knowledge about what MPRI is doing both successfully Moving forward and I'd caution if I could Jeff briefly We have to also make sure that we decide what it is that that we're using as the numbers to identify success or failure or a modicum of success for MPRI and right now I don't know that there's a good understanding of what success is termed to be Well, it depends on what you earn time for if you earn time for not in misbehaving. That's one thing if you earn time for you know a GED and associates degree any kinds of benchmarks that that MPR MPRI You know you need to hit in order to be successful. I think they fit together perfectly well I Agree, I think they do too and and one of the things that we sometimes forget is that the concept doesn't automatically Get anyone out of prison what it does is make people eligible to be seen by the Pro Board in earlier dates So if someone is in fact a low-risk person who is a likely candidate for success in the community Then the Pro Board is able to parole them sooner than they would otherwise be able to Very good Well, I apologize to those of you who posed questions that we did not have a chance to address But we are out of time and I want to be respectful of your time the time of the panel and not to mention the wonderful crew Who have been covering this? I do want to thank the Center for local state and urban policy the Gerald R. Ford school of public policy and the University of Michigan for hosting this this wonderful event and Especially I want to thank director Pat Caruso representative John prose our wonderful reporter Peter Luke and representative Alma Wheeler Smith for participating as panelists and please thank them once again