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Today’s White House: No friend of prisoners!

Marla Mitchel, a member of the Humanity for Prisoners Board of Directors, insists that our prison system is broken and that we must start over again. Professor Mitchell knows what she’s talking about. An attorney and former leader of the WMU-Cooley Law School Innocence Project, she speaks from experience.   Today there are approximately 1.9 million people incarcerated in the United States. Only two other countries have stats like these: China, and Russia. Here in Michigan, the state prison population is 32,778.   I really thought we were taking small steps forward. Agreed, it was like climbing our Lake Michigan sand dunes---three steps up and then two back down again. Then, voters chose to make a U-turn. Watching and listening to this president reminds me of the old “law and order” days when our own Governor Engler chose to be tough on crime by building more prisons and locking up more people. Our state’s prison population rose to over 50,000! Crime rates didn’t change. ...
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Pope Francis---one final kindness to men and women behind bars

Pope Francis has gone to his eternal home. But his love for prisoners lives on! Recently this headline appeared in the National Catholic Reporter:   In final act of mercy, Pope Francis donates entire private bank account to prisoners!   Writes Camillo Barone, NCR staff reporter: “At the end of his life, Pope Francis made one last symbolic gesture: He emptied his personal bank account to donate 200,000 euros to the prisoners he had long championed. It was a final act of love toward those he had called his 'brothers and sisters behind bars.'"   I don’t know how many essays I’ve written about this pope, a personal hero of mine. Each year when Holy Thursday came around, I was touched anew when Pope Francis made his annual trek to prison where, in touching ceremonies, he washed the feet of inmates.   Holy Thursday arrived shortly before the pope’s death this year. But, writes the NCR journalist, “Not able to wash feet this year on Holy Thursday, even as his streng...
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NO person? We’ll see.

  “No person … shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …” Fifth Amendment, United States Constitution   Nearly 70 years ago, when I was a young news reporter covering small town crime, our local cops were handed a new ruling, and were they pissed! The new procedure they were forced to use was called the “Miranda Warning.” In 1966 the Supreme Court decided that all criminal suspects must be informed of their constitutional rights before interrogation, particularly their right to remain silent and right to an attorney. Police officers were outraged…another liberal idea in favor of the criminals. Officers carried tiny copies of the Miranda Warning with them which they were forced to read to an alleged “perp” upon making an arrest.   Just getting started in this news reporting business, I rather sided with the cops. It seemed to me that they were doing their best to catch bad people and lock them up.   As years passed, however, ...
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Incarceration community mum on Pope Francis!

Pope Frances died on Easter Monday, and immediately we started reading headline descriptions of the Pontiff like these from around the world: CNN:   The ‘outsider’ pope who faced fierce resistance to his reforms   LA Times: …beloved for his compassion and willingness to shake up scandal-ridden church The Guardian: …who pushed for social and economic justice, and an urgent response to the climate crisis.     On the other hand, leadership from what I call “mass incarceration circles,” such as state corrections directors, prison administrators and wardens, and tough-on-crime politicians, have been less effusive in their descriptions and praise.   I’m going to let specific quotes from a hero to those of us dedicating our lives toward improving the plight of the incarcerated give you a hint as to the subdued response from some quarters.   ON PRISON LIVING CONDITIONS   “…it would appear that in many cases practical measures are urgently needed ...
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Easter morning reflections by a Michigan prisoner

Holy Week. A week filled with a tsunami of emotions. It’s early in the morning on Easter, and the stories of the past week remind me of so many similar circumstances in my own life.   Take, for example, that best friend of Jesus. Jesus had changed his name from Simon to Peter, and had expressed such high praise for him…said he was going to be the actual head of the church! So, what does Peter do when the chips are down? He denies that he ever knew the guy!   Yep, been there…done that! You’re loved by many when you go about your regular activities in your community…raise a family, go to work every day, go to church every Sunday. BUT, let something bad happen in your life, and it all goes to hell. Following an unfortunate situation, an arrest, a conviction and a sentence, not many friends anymore. I know the feeling. Many of my former associates, and even some family members, act like they never knew me.   Then there was the actual sentence of Jesus. Death on a cross....
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Washing the feet of prisoners? It’s your turn!

Well, it was Jesus who started this whole business of foot-washing. Yes, that Jesus, whose death and resurrection we remember this week.   In many churches around the country on Maundy or Holy Thursday, there’ll be foot-washing ceremonies. Remembering that unusual event in the Last Supper, people will wash the feet of fellow worshipers and pray for them while doing so. Polite, clean, beautiful.   The original ritual with our Lord and his disciples, however, did not take place in a fancy church with running water, stained glass windows and padded pews, nor did it involve beautiful, clean, pedicured feet.   In those days feet were filthy. People wore sandals in the dusty streets of Israel. The only people who washed feet were slaves. And in that hierarchical system, a slave was property, not entirely human, someone to whom one could do anything with impunity. So of course, it was the slave who washed feet. And this act was considered beneath the dignity, beneath the h...
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When is enough enough?

I’m going to give Paul Egan, our hero at the Detroit Free Press, the podium on this one. I’m speechless.   LANSING — A man died after falling from an elevated platform at a Jackson-area prison April 12 in what was the fifth similar falling or jumping death since 2020 at two state prisons.   Ervin Robinson II, 42, was an inmate at the Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center, where prisoners are normally sent for a few weeks or months after they are sentenced and before they are assigned to another state prison to serve their time.   Jenni Riehle, a spokeswoman for Michigan Department of Corrections Director Heidi Washington, confirmed Robinson's death April 15 and described it as resulting from a fall from an upper gallery.   Since 2020, Robinson and four other men have died after plunging from heights at either Egeler or a second Jackson-area prison, Parnall Correctional Facility. Each prison has a similar tiered structure with four levels of cells tha...
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