Tag: Michigan Department of Corrections

GPS Monitoring and Parole: Safety Tool or Lifetime Burden?

I have previously written about my experience wearing a GPS Tether while on parole in an article called Tether Ball and Chain that was published back in December of 2018. Since then, as part of my ministry, I have spoken with other people who have had to wear a GPS tether as a condition of parole and a surprising number of them who must wear it for life.  I thought it was time to revisit the topic with up-to-date information regarding electronic monitoring as used by the State of Michigan, with context about how this practice is used in other states and by the federal government.

Electronic monitoring has expanded significantly across the country, with an estimated 564,000 Americans currently monitored on an active electronic tracking program at any given time. This footprint is heavily driven by federal surveillance programs: including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which tracks roughly 180,000 individuals through its Alternatives to Detention programs, alongside state and local criminal justice systems. The impact of this technology is particularly visible in the Midwest, which holds the nation’s highest concentration of state-level community surveillance. In Michigan alone, the Department of Corrections monitors 5,700 parolees and probationers daily, a statistic that expands even further when accounting for county-level pretrial programs and roughly 400 individuals sentenced to the state’s strict lifetime GPS monitoring laws. As there is no centralized reporting system for electronic monitoring for pretrial programs it is not possible to determine the total number of individuals on tether in Michigan.  A report from 2020 specifically focused on 2018-19 FY data from the Wayne County jail listed the number of individuals on pretrial electronic monitoring on a daily basis at 416 and a total of 1991 for the year. It is therefore likely that the total number of pretrial individuals on tethers in Michigan is very high for people who are under electronic supervision having only been charged with misdemeanors or lower-level felonies and are considered legally innocent.[28][29][30][31][33]

Michigan has used electronic tethering for decades, and today the Michigan Department of Corrections relies on GPS monitoring as one of several community-supervision tools for parolees and some other supervised individuals. Supporters describe GPS as a way to track movements, enforce exclusion zones, and respond quickly to violations without sending every high-risk person back to prison. Critics argue that the same technology can become a costly and punitive form of perpetual surveillance, especially when it is imposed for life. The real question is not whether GPS monitoring sounds tough, but whether it actually improves public safety enough to justify its financial cost, privacy intrusions, and long-term human consequences.

How Michigan’s GPS Tether Program Developed

Michigan’s electronic monitoring program did not begin with today’s always-on GPS anklets. Earlier community-supervision systems relied on curfew monitoring and radio-frequency technology, which could confirm whether a person was at home during required hours but could not map their movements throughout the day. Over time, the state expanded its approach. Michigan Department of Corrections policy now identifies several forms of electronic monitoring, including curfew monitoring, alcohol monitoring, and GPS monitoring.

Legislative and policy materials from the early 2010s show the Department had moved away from passive GPS and was using active GPS that continuously monitored offender movement and generated alerts for boundary violations. Those same materials described GPS as a routine supervision tool for some parolees, while a separate statutory framework created lifetime electronic monitoring for certain criminal sexual conduct convictions committed on or after August 28, 2006. [1][2][3][4]

How The Technology Works

In practical terms, GPS monitoring uses an ankle-worn device that communicates with satellites to estimate location and with cellular networks to send data back to a monitoring center. Michigan policy describes GPS as one approved electronic monitoring technology, and state materials about tether alerts show how the system can flag low battery conditions, loss of GPS signal, strap tampering, communication failures, and geographic rule violations. In other words, the system does not merely record where someone has been; it can also create alerts when a person enters an exclusion zone, leaves an approved area, breaks curfew, removes the strap, or fails to keep the device charged. For lifetime monitoring, Michigan law requires the program to track movement and location from release until death, both in real time and recorded time, with information retrievable by courts or law enforcement. That makes GPS tethering both a supervision tool and a long-term data-collection system. [1][3][5][6]

Why Place Matters in GPS Monitoring

Location accuracy problems do not look the same everywhere. In dense urban areas, tall buildings, narrow streets, parking structures, and reflective surfaces can create an “urban canyon” effect in which satellite signals are blocked or bounce before reaching the device, producing location drift or jumpy tracking. A person may appear on the wrong side of a street, just outside a building, or briefly inside an exclusion zone when the problem is really signal reflection or weak satellite visibility. Indoor settings can make this worse, especially in apartment buildings, basements, factories, hospitals, and courthouses, where both GPS reception and cellular transmission may be impaired. Rural areas present a different set of problems. They usually have better open-sky satellite visibility, but they may have weaker cellular coverage, longer dead zones between towers, and more rugged terrain, all of which can delay uploads or create communication-loss alerts even when the device is still attached and the wearer is where they are supposed to be. In short, cities tend to create accuracy problems, while rural areas more often create connectivity problems, and both can generate misleading alerts if agencies treat every signal anomaly as deliberate misconduct. [15][18][19][20]

This urban-rural divide matters in Michigan because the state spans very different supervision environments. Metro Detroit and other built-up areas can produce the urban canyon, indoor, and multi-story housing problems that make exclusion-zone alerts harder to interpret with confidence. At the same time, northern and western rural counties can present sparse carrier coverage, long travel distances, and weather-related or terrain-related communication problems that slow transmission and complicate response. A GPS system that seems highly precise in policy language may therefore behave very differently depending on where a person lives, works, receives treatment, or travels. That inconsistency is important when violations can lead to jail, prison, or new supervision sanctions. The practical lesson is that a statewide tether program should not assume that one device setting, one alert threshold, or one response protocol works equally well in downtown Detroit, a suburban warehouse corridor, and a remote rural area of the Upper or northern Lower Peninsula. [15][18][19][20]

The Claimed Benefits and the Real Drawbacks

The strongest argument for GPS monitoring is that it gives parole agents more information than ordinary supervision. It can help enforce victim-related exclusion zones, document curfew compliance, and provide a record when someone absconds or tampers with a device. Research outside Michigan suggests electronic monitoring can reduce some forms of recidivism for some groups, particularly when it is paired with structured supervision and support rather than used as a stand-alone punishment. But the drawbacks are substantial. GPS is not a form of prevention itself; it mostly detects movement and rule violations. It cannot stop a new crime in real time unless staff are actively watching, capable of responding immediately, and focused on the right alerts. It also produces false or low-value alerts caused by dead batteries, weak cellular service, signal gaps, or device malfunctions, which can burden both staff and monitored individuals. More broadly, critics argue that tethering can widen the net of punishment by turning technical missteps such as charging failures, late arrivals, or ambiguous zone entries into violations that trigger incarceration, even when there is no new victim and no new crime. It can also interfere with work, housing, medical care, family life, and mental well-being, especially when the device is visible and stigmatizing. [5][7][8][9][10]

What It Costs and Who Profits

The cost question is harder to answer with precision than the rhetoric around GPS monitoring might suggest. Michigan law is clear on one point: a person on lifetime electronic monitoring must reimburse the Department or its agent, and after discharge from parole the statute sets the rate at $60 per month. Department policy also states that offenders are required to pay electronic monitoring fees under the supervision-fee policy, and Michigan’s supervision-fee framework sets a higher monthly rate for people supervised with an electronic monitoring device than for those without one. What is less transparent in public-facing sources is the full cost structure borne by the state, including equipment procurement, monitoring-center staffing, maintenance, data services, and vendor contracts. That opacity matters, because GPS monitoring generates revenue for private equipment makers, monitoring contractors, telecommunications providers, and any state or local systems funded partly through user fees. Public Michigan materials tied tether alerts to 3M electronic monitoring equipment, showing at least one major corporate player in the technology chain. More broadly, the profit model is straightforward: the longer a person remains on a device, the longer equipment, monitoring, service, and fee streams continue. Even if GPS is cheaper than incarceration, that does not mean it is cheap, fair, or free from financial incentives that reward prolonged surveillance. [1][3][5][6][11]

While the amount spent on GPS monitoring is not readily accessible, industry sources project eyepopping revenue growth world-wide. The market value is staggering. In 2024 the market value was pegged at 2.95 Billion US Dollars globally. By 2032 the projection is a market value of 6.5 Billion USD. There is a tremendous financial incentive to grow the use of this technology even in the face or ethical, moral, social or technical critiques.[32]

How Michigan Compares with Other State and Federal Tether Programs

Michigan sits in the more punitive wing of state tether policy because it combines ordinary discretionary electronic monitoring for some parolees with a separate mandatory lifetime electronic monitoring scheme for certain criminal sexual conduct convictions. That is not how every state operates. Across the country, electronic monitoring is a patchwork: some states use GPS mainly as a short-term supervision tool for pretrial release, probation, or parole; some authorize it broadly but leave most decisions to judges, parole boards, or supervising agencies; and some, like California and Florida, built especially aggressive sex-offender GPS systems after high-profile legislation in the mid-2000s. In that broader landscape, Michigan is not alone in imposing very long monitoring terms on some sex offenders, but it is distinct in the rigidity of its statutory lifetime model and in the way the requirement attaches automatically to certain convictions rather than turning primarily on an individualized finding of current risk. That makes Michigan less flexible than states that allow periodic review, narrower tailoring, or greater judicial discretion. [3][4][12][13][14]

The federal system offers an especially useful contrast. Federal courts generally refer to this as location monitoring rather than tethering, and they treat it as a court-imposed supervision tool that can include radio-frequency monitoring, GPS, or other technologies. But the federal model is more individualized and, at least on paper, more restrained. Judges impose it case by case as a condition of pretrial release, probation, home detention, or supervised release, guided by risk and supervision goals rather than by a broad, offense-based lifetime mandate. Federal guidance also expressly states that location monitoring is not a guarantee against new crime and is not a substitute for supervision, and federal materials indicate officers are not watching every movement in real time around the clock. Recent federal oversight reports emphasize alert fatigue, staffing burdens, connection failures, and employment obstacles for monitored individuals. Compared with that framework, Michigan’s lifetime tether regime looks more categorical, more permanent, and less tied to ongoing reassessment of whether the person still needs round-the-clock tracking years or decades after release. [12][15][16][17]

State and Federal Regulatory and Judicial Activity

Michigan is currently experiencing more judicial and adjacent legislative movement than direct statutory reform of the tether program itself. On the legislative side, Senate Bill 424 of 2025 would revise parts of the Sex Offenders Registration Act, including review procedures and treatment of some out-of-state convictions. That bill does not directly rewrite the lifetime electronic monitoring statutes, but it reflects ongoing pressure to make Michigan’s broader sex-offense supervision system more reviewable and more legally durable. On the judicial side, litigation has continued to test whether lifetime electronic monitoring can survive modern constitutional scrutiny when it is imposed automatically, without individualized risk findings and without a meaningful mechanism for removal. Earlier Michigan cases treated lifetime monitoring as a required part of the sentence, but more recent constitutional litigation has pressed the questions of proportionality, punishment, and unreasonable search with greater force. [3][4][21][22][23]

At the federal level, the picture is different because SORNA is primarily a registration and notification framework, not a national GPS tether mandate. Federal law, regulations, and SMART Office guidance create minimum national standards for who must register, what information must be reported, how often people must appear, and how jurisdictions share and disclose information. But those standards do not establish a uniform federal lifetime ankle-monitoring program for all covered offenders. Instead, federal location monitoring remains largely a supervision tool used case by case in pretrial services, probation, and supervised release. Recent federal activity has therefore focused less on expanding tethering and more on administering SORNA, tracking implementation across jurisdictions, and improving the management of federal location monitoring programs. Oversight materials from the Government Accountability Office have emphasized staffing strain, alert management, and data quality, while proposed supervised-release reforms would move the federal system further toward individualized assessment and earlier termination when continued supervision is not necessary. [12][15][16][24][25][26]

The gap between Michigan’s lifetime tether regime and the federal model is, at least for now, growing rather than shrinking. Michigan still relies on offense-based lifetime monitoring rules that can operate automatically and indefinitely, while the federal system is moving rhetorically and institutionally toward individualized supervision, workload triage, and periodic reassessment. At the same time, the gap between states remains wide because SORNA standardizes registration far more than it standardizes tethering. That leaves a major policy vacuum: two people with similar histories may face radically different GPS burdens depending on the state in which they live. There is a strong argument for more uniform baseline regulations regarding tethering, especially if electronic monitoring is going to be justified as a public-safety measure rather than simply an add-on punishment. Those baseline rules should include clear accuracy and alert standards, transparency about fees and vendor contracts, due-process protections for technical violations, periodic individualized review, and a meaningful path off lifetime monitoring when risk demonstrably declines. A uniform framework would not require every state to impose the same level of surveillance, but it could prevent the current patchwork in which the federal SORNA system promotes national consistency in registration while leaving electronic monitoring to fragment into dramatically different and sometimes constitutionally vulnerable state regimes. [3][4][15][21][24][25][26]

Does It Make Anyone Safer? And Does Lifetime Tether Cause More Harm Than Good?

The most defensible answer to whether GPS monitoring makes anyone safer is: sometimes, but only under limited conditions. It can improve supervision by making some kinds of noncompliance visible, helping agents enforce boundaries, and possibly deterring some people from violating rules or approaching prohibited locations. In that narrow sense, it may improve safety for some victims and communities. But the evidence does not support treating GPS as a magic shield. A bracelet does not create housing, treatment, employment, accountability, or meaningful rehabilitation. Safety improves most when monitoring is targeted, temporary, proportionate, and combined with human support and careful judgment rather than used as a substitute for them. [1][7][8][10]

As for lifetime tethering, the case against it is stronger. A sanction that follows a person until death, without an individualized off-ramp tied to demonstrated rehabilitation and actual risk, can easily become more punitive than protective. Lifetime monitoring may create ongoing stigma, recurring fees, technical violations, employment barriers, and psychological strain long after the period of highest risk has passed. It can consume public resources indefinitely while offering diminishing returns. For a small number of people in narrow circumstances, long-term GPS may still be defended as a precaution. But as a blanket or near-automatic policy, tether for life risks confusing surveillance with safety. If Michigan wants a system that truly protects the public, it should ask harder questions about proportionality, reviewability, transparency, cost, and whether permanent tracking is solving a real danger or simply extending punishment by electronic means. [3][4][8][9][10][11]

References

  1. Michigan Department of Corrections, Policy Directive 06.03.105, Electronic Monitoring of Offenders.
  2. Michigan Department of Corrections, Policy Directive 06.04.100, Lifetime Electronic Monitoring of Sex Offenders.
  3. Michigan Compiled Laws 791.285, Lifetime Electronic Monitoring Program.
  4. Michigan Compiled Laws 750.520n, Lifetime Electronic Monitoring.
  5. State of Michigan, GPS Tether Violation Alert Definitions, including alert and zone categories for GPS monitoring equipment.
  6. Michigan Department of Corrections, Policy Directive 06.02.110, Supervision Fees; see also MCL 791.236a regarding parole supervision fees with and without electronic monitoring devices.
  7. National Institute of Justice, Electronic Monitoring Reduces Recidivism (2011).
  8. Bales, Mann, Blomberg, Gaes, Barrick, Dhungana, and McManus, A Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Electronic Monitoring, National Institute of Justice final report (2010).
  9. Pew Charitable Trusts, Policy Reforms Can Strengthen Community Supervision (2020).
  10. George Washington University Law research summarized in Electronic Prisons: The Operation of Ankle Monitoring in the Criminal Legal System (2021), as reported by GW Today.
  11. Fines and Fees Justice Center, Electronic Monitoring Fees: A 50-State Survey of the Costs Assessed to People on E-Supervision (2022).
  12. United States Courts, Federal Location Monitoring, and Location Monitoring Reference Guide.
  13. Vera Institute of Justice, People on Electronic Monitoring (2024).
  14. International Association of Chiefs of Police, Tracking Sex Offenders with Electronic Monitoring Technology: Implications and Practical Uses for Law Enforcement (2008).
  15. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Pretrial Supervision: Actions Needed to Enhance Management of the Location Monitoring Program, GAO-23-105873 (2023).
  16. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Division of Adult Parole Operations, Electronic Monitoring and related sex-offender parole materials.
  17. California Office of the Inspector General, Assessment of Electronic Monitoring of Sex Offenders on Parole and the Impact of Residency Restrictions (2014).
  18. Heaton, Harold I., GPS Monitoring Practices in Community Supervision and the Potential Impact of Advanced Analytics, National Institute of Justice (2016).
  19. Brown, McCabe, and Wellford, Global Positioning System (GPS) Technology for Community Supervision: Lessons Learned, National Institute of Justice / Noblis (2007).
  20. Research on GNSS performance in urban canyon environments, including signal blockage, multipath, and reduced satellite visibility in dense city settings.
  21. Michigan Senate Bill 424 of 2025 and related Senate Fiscal Agency analysis.
  22. Michigan Supreme Court and Court of Appeals materials concerning lifetime electronic monitoring, including People v. Kardasz, People v. Martin, and People v. Hallak.
  23. Michigan Courts benchbook materials on lifetime electronic monitoring, including statutory scope and sentencing treatment.
  24. SMART Office, SORNA; U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
  25. 28 C.F.R. Part 72, Sex Offender Registration and Notification.
  26. SMART Office, Case Law Summary and implementation materials concerning legal challenges, federal standards, and jurisdictional compliance.
  27. Federal supervised-release reform proposals, including the Safer Supervision Act of 2025.
  28. Reference 1: National Electronic Monitoring Figures from Berg Insite, Electronic Offender Monitoring Solutions (4th Edition), 2026.
  29. Reference 2: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Surveillance, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) ICE Alternatives to Detention: Latest Data Tracking, 2024
  30. Reference 3: Regional Density and Monitoring Impacts, Electronic Frontier Foundation, : Street Level Surveillance: Electronic Monitoring, 2023
  31. Reference 4: Michigan State Tracking Statistics, Michigan Department of Corrections,  Electronic Monitoring Center Program Operations Overview, 2022
  32. https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/electronic-offender-monitoring-solution-market-35874
  33. https://www.vera.org/jail-incarceration-in-wayne-county-michigan/reducing-the-use-of-pretrial-electronic-monitoring

Reform Solitary Confinement Practices in Michigan Prisons Now!

May is Unlock the Box Mental Health Awareness Month.  The Unlock the Box Campaign is a coalition of organizations and movement leaders who partner with state and local campaigns across the United States with the common goal of ending the use of solitary confinement for all people. Currently active in 22 states and the District of Columbia, including Michigan.  Open MI Door is the organization leading the fight in Michigan.  OMD is seeking to affect policies and practices in all Michigan prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities.  Current focus is on ensuring transparency, accountability, and independent oversight in the use of isolation and in conditions of confinement in general.

The statistics regarding the effects of solitary confinement are alarming.  Right now, there are at least 122,000 people being held in solitary confinement in the United States.  Over a third of people subjected to solitary confinement become psychotic and/or suicidal within the first 15 days.  Individuals who have been in solitary confinement are 78% more likely to commit suicide within a year of their release from prison.

The Michigan Department of Corrections, or MDOC, does not usually use the phrase “solitary confinement” in its internal rules. Instead, it describes the practice as “segregation” or “restrictive housing.” That language matters, because bureaucratic terms can make an extreme practice sound routine. But the reality described in the department’s own policy materials and in the references collected here is unmistakable: segregation means isolating people from the general prison population, often for 23 to 24 hours a day, with sharply restricted movement, limited human contact, and minimal access to ordinary programming. MDOC policy presents segregation as a management tool used for discipline, control, and protection, while critics argue that it functions as a deeply harmful form of isolation that causes lasting psychological damage and undermines rehabilitation.

Michigan’s system illustrates the central contradiction in the national debate over solitary confinement. Prison administrators defend segregation as necessary in some cases to manage violence, serious misconduct, escape risk, or threats to vulnerable prisoners. At the same time, decades of reporting, advocacy, and international human-rights standards have increasingly challenged prolonged isolation as unsafe, inequitable, and incompatible with basic human dignity. Even MDOC’s own reporting shows that the department has sharply reduced administrative segregation over time, suggesting that the state itself recognizes that heavy reliance on this practice is neither inevitable nor desirable. The question is no longer whether segregation is severe. The question is whether Michigan should continue to rely on it in its current form. The strongest answer, based on the material in this document and the cited sources, is no: prolonged segregation should be discontinued and replaced with tightly limited, reviewable, therapeutic, and safety-focused alternatives.

What Segregation Means in the MDOC

According to MDOC policy, segregation is not a single category but a system with several forms. Temporary segregation is short-term isolation used while staff investigate alleged misconduct or await a hearing. Punitive segregation is imposed as a disciplinary sanction after a person is found guilty of a major misconduct violation. Administrative segregation is the most troubling category because it can become long-term. It is reserved for people that the department considers serious threats to institutional safety, major escape risks, unmanageable in general population, or in need of protective separation. On paper, each category has a different purpose. In practice, all three involve versions of extreme separation from ordinary prison life.

The living conditions are severe. People in long-term segregation may spend nearly the entire day alone in a cell of roughly 70 to 80 square feet. Human interaction is drastically limited. When they leave the cell, they may be shackled. Exercise is restricted and often takes place in enclosed spaces rather than meaningful recreation areas. Meals are delivered through a slot in the door. Showers and other basic activities are tightly controlled. These are not incidental inconveniences. They are the core features of an environment built around deprivation, surveillance, and social isolation.

What a typical solitary confinement cell looks like.
What an exercise cage looks like.

MDOC also emphasizes that segregation is regulated through reviews. Placement decisions are supposed to be examined by a housing unit team, the Security Classification Committee, wardens, and in longer cases higher-level administrators. Those review requirements are important, but they do not erase the underlying harm of isolation. The system can be procedurally structured and still be substantively damaging. If the practical result is that a person spends months or years in near-total isolation, repeated reviews do not change the nature of the confinement. They only document it.

Why MDOC Uses Segregation

MDOC’s own policy language makes its rationale clear. Segregation is used, in the department’s words, to achieve effective administrative management, maximum disciplinary control, and individual prisoner protection. That means the practice is justified on three main grounds. First, it is used as punishment for major misconduct. Second, it is used as a security tool when officials believe someone presents a danger to staff or other incarcerated people. Third, it is used, at least sometimes, to separate people who may themselves be at risk of harm in the general population.

Those reasons are not frivolous. Prisons are coercive environments, and correctional administrators are responsible for preventing violence and responding to emergencies. There are situations in which immediate separation is necessary. A person who has just committed a serious assault, threatened staff, or faces a credible risk of being attacked may need to be removed quickly from the general population. Any honest analysis should acknowledge that reality. The problem is that a short-term emergency separation tool is not the same thing as a long-term isolation regime. What may be justified for hours or days becomes far harder to justify when it stretches into weeks, months, or years.

Michigan’s own recent policy developments suggest that the state understands this distinction. The department has reported large reductions in segregation since 2008 and has developed Structured Alternative to Administrative Segregation (START) units as alternatives for some prisoners with serious mental illness. Those reforms implicitly recognize that segregation has often been overused and that at least some of the people once held there can be managed differently. If safer alternatives exist for many cases, then prolonged segregation is less a necessity than a policy choice.

What the Outcomes Show

One of the clearest outcomes in the record is that Michigan has reduced its use of administrative segregation substantially. The data table shows a decline from 479,791 total segregation days and a daily average population of 1,314 in fiscal year 2007–2008 to 102,395 days and a daily average of 281 in 2024–2025. That is a dramatic drop. It undermines any claim that Michigan must rely on segregation at the levels it once did. If the prison system can function with far fewer people in administrative segregation than it held there in 2008, then the older level of use was not an unavoidable feature of prison management. It was an institutional practice that could be changed.

At the same time, a reduction in volume does not resolve the moral and practical concerns. Hundreds of people are still held in administrative segregation, and some remain there for periods exceeding 3, 6, or 12 months. That matters because the harms of segregation are not measured only by how many people are isolated, but also by how long the isolation lasts. The United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules define solitary confinement as confinement for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact, define prolonged solitary confinement as anything beyond 15 consecutive days, and prohibit indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement as inconsistent with minimum standards for humane treatment. Michigan’s own reports showing people in segregation for months or longer place the state in direct tension with those standards.

The human outcomes described in the references are equally serious. Advocates, family reports, legal analyses, and broader research on solitary confinement consistently associate prolonged isolation with anxiety, depression, cognitive deterioration, self-harm risk, hopelessness, and worsening symptoms for people with mental illness or developmental disabilities. Even when corrections officials present segregation as a safety measure, the evidence suggests that isolation can destabilize the very people the institution is trying to manage. That creates a damaging cycle: distress leads to misconduct, misconduct leads to more isolation, and more isolation deepens distress.

There are also broader institutional outcomes. Segregation can make reentry into the general prison population harder by eroding social functioning and increasing distrust. It can also make release into the community more dangerous when people leave prison directly from highly isolating conditions without adequate step-down support. And the practice appears to fall unevenly across the prison population. The materials in this document point to racial disparities in segregation use, with Black men overrepresented in segregated housing compared with their share of the overall prison population. That raises an additional reform concern: segregation is not only severe but may also be administered inequitably.

Additional support for ending prolonged segregation comes from the Unlock the Box campaign, a national coalition focused on abolishing solitary confinement in the United States. The campaign argues that solitary is not only harmful but also counterproductive. Its public materials describe solitary confinement as extreme isolation for 22 or more hours a day, note that an estimated 85 percent of people in solitary are there for nonviolent disciplinary reasons, and report that as many as one-half of those in solitary live with mental illness that isolation can worsen. Unlock the Box also emphasizes that prolonged solitary confinement does not make prisons or communities safer, and that people of color are disproportionately subjected to it beyond their already disproportionate representation in prison populations. Those points reinforce the case that prolonged segregation in Michigan should not be treated as an unfortunate but necessary norm; it should be understood as a policy choice with predictable harms and unequal effects that demand correction.

Segregation and Human Rights

The international human-rights case against prolonged segregation is powerful and increasingly specific. The United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules do not treat isolation as a neutral administrative option. They treat it as a practice requiring strict limits because of its potential to become cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Under those rules, prolonged solitary confinement means more than 15 consecutive days, and indefinite solitary confinement is prohibited. The rules also emphasize that solitary confinement should be used only in exceptional cases, as a last resort, for the shortest possible time, and subject to independent review. They further state that it should not be used when a prisoner’s mental or physical disability would be exacerbated by the measure.

Measured against that standard, Michigan’s regime raises serious concerns. The state may call the practice administrative segregation, temporary segregation, or punitive segregation, but a change in terminology does not change the lived reality of isolation. If a person is locked down for 22 to 24 hours a day with little meaningful human contact, then the practice falls within the human-rights framework developed by the United Nations. And if that confinement continues for months, as Michigan’s own reports show happens in some cases, then the state is operating beyond the threshold the Mandela Rules identify as prolonged solitary confinement.

Some defenders of the current system argue that prison safety justifies these departures. Safety is important, but human-rights standards already account for that argument. The Mandela Rules do not forbid every temporary emergency separation. They forbid turning isolation into a routine or open-ended instrument of prison governance. That distinction is crucial. A correctional system can protect staff and prisoners while still rejecting prolonged solitary confinement. In fact, Michigan’s own reduction in segregation usage suggests that reform is compatible with institutional order. The human-rights issue is therefore not whether prison officials ever need tools for emergency separation. It is whether the state should keep using prolonged isolation after it knows the damage it causes and after alternatives have already been shown to exist.

Should Michigan Discontinue Segregation?

If the question means whether Michigan should eliminate every form of temporary emergency separation, the answer is probably no. Prisons need a narrow capacity to separate people immediately after violence, during investigations, or when a person faces an imminent threat. But if the question is whether Michigan should discontinue prolonged segregation as a standing correctional practice, the answer should be yes. Long-term isolation should end.

There are several reasons for that conclusion. First, the harms are too severe. Segregation can intensify mental distress, undermine stability, and damage the social capacities people need both inside prison and after release. Second, the practice is inconsistent with modern human-rights standards once it extends beyond very short periods. Third, the state’s own declining segregation numbers show that Michigan can reduce its use substantially without abandoning prison administration altogether. Fourth, indefinite or months-long isolation invites arbitrary and unequal outcomes, especially where racial disparities and mental health concerns are already present.

Discontinuing prolonged segregation does not mean ignoring violence or misconduct. It means replacing a blunt and damaging tool with more precise responses: short emergency separation, intensive mental-health intervention, structured step-down units, restorative or behavior-based programming, and individualized safety planning for those who need protection. A prison system committed to safety should prefer methods that reduce future harm rather than deepen it.

What Reform Should Look Like

Real reform in Michigan should begin with a clear legal time limit that brings state practice closer to the Mandela Rules. The legislature should prohibit prolonged solitary confinement, ban indefinite segregation, and require meaningful out-of-cell time, programming, and regular independent review for anyone held apart from the general population. People with serious mental illness, developmental disabilities, and other especially vulnerable conditions should not be placed in isolating units that predictably worsen their condition.

Reform should also require transparency. Michigan already reports some segregation data, but durable accountability needs more than aggregate totals. Public reporting should include duration, facility-level usage, demographic patterns, mental-health status, reasons for placement, and release pathways from segregation. The point of transparency is not only to monitor numbers; it is to expose whether the system is relying on isolation as a substitute for staffing, treatment, training, or conflict resolution.

Finally, reform must include culture change. Segregation survives not only because policies authorize it, but because institutions become accustomed to treating isolation as normal. That habit is hard to break. Michigan should invest in staff training, behavioral de-escalation, therapeutic housing, and transition units that prepare people to return safely to prison programming and eventually to the community. If the state is serious about rehabilitation, it cannot continue to rely on a practice that strips people of meaningful human contact and then expects them to emerge healthier, safer, or more prepared for life after incarceration.

Unlock the Box also helps clarify what reform can look like in practice. Its campaign materials highlight legislative approaches that prohibit solitary confinement beyond 15 days in line with the Mandela Rules, create independent oversight, protect vulnerable groups, and in some proposals reduce isolation for emergency de-escalation to only a few hours while requiring safe and humane alternatives. That framework supports a practical reform agenda for Michigan: narrow the grounds for separation, impose strict time caps, expand therapeutic and program-rich alternatives, increase meaningful out-of-cell time, and ensure that any temporary separation is genuinely brief and tied to a clear transition plan back to less restrictive conditions.

Segregation in the Michigan Department of Corrections was built on the idea that isolation can produce order. The evidence suggests something more complicated and more troubling: isolation may sometimes create temporary control, but it does so at high human cost and with serious legal and moral consequences. Michigan has already shown that it can reduce segregation. The next step is to go further by ending prolonged isolation, preserving only tightly limited emergency separation, and building a correctional system centered on safety, treatment, accountability, and human dignity.

Open MI Door is fighting for the passage of bill SB493, which seeks to expand the powers and duties of the Legislative Corrective Ombudsperson’s Office as a meaningful step forward in bringing our state into full compliance with the UN’s Mandela Rules.  If you know someone in prison or who has been in prison check out the mental health resources available on the OMD website.

References

Michigan Department of Corrections. Policy Directive 04.05.120: Segregation Standards. Effective June 1, 2019.

Michigan Department of Corrections. Report to the Legislature: Administrative Segregation Report. March 30, 2026.

United Nations General Assembly. United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules), A/RES/70/175. January 8, 2016.

U.S. Department of Justice. Report and Recommendations Concerning the Use of Restrictive Housing. January 2016.

Luigi, M., Dellazizzo, L., Giguère, C.-É., Goulet, M.-H., & Dumais, A. “Shedding Light on ‘the Hole’: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on Adverse Psychological Effects and Mortality Following Solitary Confinement in Correctional Settings.” Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11 (2020).

Vera Institute of Justice. The Impacts of Solitary Confinement. April 2021.

Unlock the Box Campaign. About Us; Resources: Solitary by the Numbers; and Experience. Accessed May 16, 2026.

https://unlocktheboxcampaign.org

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April Is Second Chance Month: Why It Matters More Than Ever

Every April, communities across the United States pause to recognize a powerful truth: No one should be defined forever by their worst mistake. April is Second Chance Month, a nationwide effort to raise awareness of the barriers facing people with criminal records and to promote policies and practices that support successful reentry, restoration, and community safety.

A Movement Rooted in Dignity and Opportunity

Second Chance Month was founded in 2017 by Prison Fellowship, the nation’s largest Christian nonprofit serving currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families. The initiative highlights a sobering reality: nearly 1 in 3 American adults has a criminal record, and many face lifelong obstacles long after completing their sentence. These barriers now numbering close to 44,000 legal restrictions nationwide, can limit access to employment, housing, education, and even basic civic participation.

Over the years, Second Chance Month has grown into a broad, bipartisan movement. Presidential proclamations have been issued consistently since 2018, and the United States Senate has repeatedly passed resolutions recognizing April as Second Chance Month. By 2025, 27 states joined more than 1,100 Churches, Employers, and Community partners in formally recognizing the month and calling attention to the need for meaningful second chances.

Why Second Chances Are a Public Safety Issue

Reentry is often framed as charity or social service, but research and experience show it is a core public safety strategy. Nearly 95% of incarcerated people will eventually return home, with approximately 600,000 people released from state and federal prisons each year, along with millions more from local jails.

The period immediately following release is especially critical. When individuals lack stable housing, health care, employment, or community support, the risk of recidivism increases—not just harming individuals and families, but entire communities.

Organizations like the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) emphasize that the most effective reentry efforts align multiple systems from day one:

  • Housing and employment
  • Behavioral health care
  • Community supervision
  • Family and community supports

When these systems work together, beginning before and continuing through the early months after release; public safety improves, costs decrease, and people have a genuine opportunity to rebuild their lives.

A Personal Story Behind the Statistics

While the numbers are compelling, the heart of Second Chance Month lies in individual lives.

In a powerful reflection shared during Second Chance Month, Michelle Cirocco, a nonprofit executive and formerly incarcerated woman, describes the reaction she often receives when she shares her past: surprise. Despite her professional success, people struggle to reconcile her accomplishments with her history of incarceration.

Her message is clear: she is not the exception. She represents what happens when opportunity meets accountability, support, and belief in human potential. Millions of others, she reminds us, are still waiting for that same chance—not to be extraordinary, but simply to be seen as human.

Second Chance Month challenges the damaging assumption that people behind bars are a permanent “other.” Instead, it calls us to recognize what has always been true: People are more than the worst thing they have done.

Faith, Forgiveness, and Restoration

For many faith communities, Second Chance Month is deeply rooted in spiritual principles of Redemption, Mercy, and Reconciliation. Churches across the country observe Second Chance Sunday in April, offering prayer and support for people impacted by crime and incarceration.

Moving From Awareness to Action

As leaders from across Christian traditions have emphasized, there is no theological basis for stripping someone of dignity after they have paid their debt. Restoration of Individuals, Families, and Communities is both a moral calling and a practical necessity.

Second Chance Month is about more than recognition—it is a call to action.

Policymakers are encouraged to:

  • Sustain funding for evidence-based reentry programs
  • Promote cross-agency coordination

Practitioners are urged to:

  • Focus resources on the critical early months after release
  • Use data-informed, individualized approaches

Funders and partners are called to:

  • Invest in systemwide solutions, not isolated programs
  • Support scaling what works

And Communities including employers, churches, and civic leaders can play a transformative role by offering opportunity instead of judgment.

Michigan’s Success Story

In 2018 Michigan governor Rick Snyder declared April 2018 to be Second Chance Month.  Since that time Michigan has made progress and is addressing the needs of returning citizens in statistically meaningful and tangible ways. Recidivism rates have been reduced significantly as the Michigan Department of Corrections has increased its focus on Housing and Employment, Behavioral health care, Community supervision, and Family and Community support through its Offender Success Reentry Services program. Offender Success, formerly known as the Michigan Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative, is a public-private partnership that relies on unprecedented collaboration and teamwork between state agencies, human service providers, the faith-based community and private companies who share a vested interest in safer communities and opportunities for all.

Offender Success is a public safety program based on 20 years of research on what works to help returning citizens succeed. By providing needed support, resources and tools, we create safer communities, a better economy and increased quality of life for returning citizens and their families. Offender Success is a hand-up, not a hand-out.

Evidence-Based Programs

Research has shown that evidence-based cognitive programming helps reduce future risk. Programs include Violence Prevention Programming and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. OS Staff develop and monitor these programs, while also ensuring that prisoners are properly placed in these programs based on their parole board jurisdiction date. OS also works with counties throughout the state to provide evidence-based support to probationers through Community Corrections

The Offender Success Administration is housed within the MDOC’s Executive Office and has staff at prisons throughout the state.  Staff members include educators, school staff, institutional parole agents, specialists, and analysts who oversee various programs within the prisons and contracted services in the community.  The goal of this diverse group of professionals is to foster change and success for those in prison, as well as those on parole or probation.

There are four Major Areas of Focus: Evidence-based Programs, Education, In-Reach, and Community Supports for Parolees.

Education

Michigan is a national leader in correctional education and operates a school at each prison. Schools teach academic (high school equivalency), special education, and career and technical education programs. The MDOC also operates three Vocational Villages, which are the most immersive prison vocational programs in the nation, training students in high-demand trades. The MDOC also partners with a variety of colleges and universities that provide post-secondary classes and degrees to those in prison. 

In-Reach

Serving as the bridge between incarceration and the community, In-Reach is utilized by the parole board to provide a more focused opportunity to plan for reentry with the support of dedicated staff.

Community Supports for Parolees

Part of ensuring public safety and personal success is providing necessary supports, such as stable housing, basic supplies, or assistance finding or maintaining a job. The MDOC contracts with 10 regional administrative agencies that provide this assistance and more to eligible parolees throughout the state. Offender Success also oversees a mentoring program for those who are on parole, connecting them with those that have successfully gone through the criminal justice system as a positive peer support.

A Chapter, Not the Whole Book

Second Chance Month reminds us that a past mistake should be a chapter in someone’s story, not the end of it. When we remove unnecessary barriers, align systems, and choose dignity over stigma, we don’t just help individuals succeed. We build safer, stronger, and more compassionate communities for everyone. Let’s commit to seeing the person behind the record and to unlocking second chances that truly last.