Michigan’s legislature is debating the House’s “day-for-day” legislation that would instantly cut prisoner sentences in half, including those currently incarcerated. However, I oppose these bills. Here’s why:
- Day-for-day good time creates uncertainty for the public and victims, who should have assurance that the sentences that judges hand down are not mere shadows of what offenders actually serve.
- Day-for-day good time may not reduce prisoner sentences and their associated waste. Judges can simply double the sentences they hand out. Michigan judges are politically motivated to do so, and sentencing guidelines are advisory. The question is, why wouldn’t they?
- The day-for-day bill may not garner the political will power to pass without putting extreme limitations on it, like preventing it from applying retroactively or denying it to “violent” offenders. (Research indicates that violent offenders are one of the groups least likely to recidivate, contrary to popular opinion.)
- Trying to force the current bill through legislature will at least delay the process, preventing the bill from affecting thousands of people. Even if it is passed, the MDOC [Michigan Department of Corrections] will likely spend years implementing it. The Federal Bureau of Prisons took four years to implement the “First Step Act.”
Combined, these points significantly reduce the positive benefits that a “good time” bill could provide. Still, Michigan desperately needs some form of good time.
First, corrections consumes over 20% of the Michigan budget, and keeping people incarcerated longer than necessary to attain rehabilitation wastes money. The community could use these funds in other ways, including crime prevention.
Second, and more important, good time can make society safer. People intuitively recognize the need to encourage prisoners to engage in pro-social behavior, something the previous good time statute acknowledged (cf. MCL 800.33).
Third, the state already grants good time to county jail inmates (MCL 51.282)! In contrast, state prisoners have not been able to reduce their sentences through good behavior since 1998, when Gov. Engler and the legislature orchestrated “truth in sentencing.”
Although some are afraid that good time will flood the streets with criminals, there are many checks to prevent this. Judges, prosecutors, victims and the parole board together have a nearly unfettered ability to prevent prisoners from attaining parole. In contrast, prisoners have less than a 1% chance of overturning parole denials (cf. MCL 791.201; MCL 600.631; Morales v. Michigan Parole Board, 260 Mich App 29 (2003)).
Instead of turning America into a doomsday apocalypse akin to Mad Max’s “Thunder Dome,” good time simply increases the parole board’s discretion to grant parole. Indeed, without good time, the parole board cannot release anyone until they reach their “earliest release date,” a timeline created by judges years or decades prior. Since judges do not have magic crystal balls that can predict the future, the accuracy and value of such mandatory minimums are questionable. Thus, the parole board should be able to evaluate these decisions, particularly when a prisoner’s institutional behavior indicates rehabilitation.
However, providing “day-for-day good time” is simply not smart policy, as it adds weaknesses to a good idea without providing much benefit. In other words, “day-for-day” harms the interests of everyone involved, at least compared to a progressive good-time scheme (where prisoners receive greater reductions in exchange for good behavior over longer periods of time, e.g., five days per month in the first two years, seven days in years three through four). Thus, a progressive good time scheme encourages rehabilitation, mitigates the harmful effects of incarceration on the prisoners themselves, and reduces government waste, without the negative side effects of day-for-day good time.
