(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/05/2024) The Governor's corrections department remains opposed to legislation reforming the state's legislative corrections ombudsman and how it investigates the state's prisons. The bill now sits dormant in a House committee after receiving unanimous support in the Senate about three months ago.
The aforementioned bill would permit inmates' family members and prisoner advocates to file complaints and set off investigations to be conducted by the current Legislative Corrections Ombudsman. The ombudsman serves the Legislature and holds access to MDOC facilities, as well as records and documents within its possession.
SB 493 by Sen. Sylvia Santana (D-Detroit) was referred to the House Government Operations Committee, a committee that's been described by Capitol insiders as “political purgatory,” traditionally being a place where bills are held up for non-policy reasons. MIRS learned that the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) – a part of Gov. Gretchen WHITMER's executive branch – does not know whether the bill will be taken up or not for testimony by the House panel, but its opposition has not changed since it was first discussed by the Senate Oversight Committee in October.
Santana expressed the bill could be delayed due to the ongoing “stalemate” in the House. Presently, the House is made up of a 54-54 political split between Democrats and Republicans, with Democrats expecting to return to a 56-seat majority following the April 16 special elections. The two special elections are for Democratic stronghold districts, the Warren-based 13th House district and the Westland-based 25th district.
"I don't think there should be any holdups on that legislation. It is obviously bipartisan in nature. Both chambers, I think, unanimously believe that it is the right thing to do," Santana said to MIRS. "I'm hoping that we'll have a hearing here in the next couple of months or so…obviously, the budget is the priority right now . . . but hopefully we'll have a hearing before we all go out on recess, and also get it done."
But with Democrats still leading individual committees in the House, a Republican legislator could make the case that any delays surrounding SB 493 have nothing to do with their caucus.
"I think we did a lot of progressive legislation at the beginning of our term in office. However, I think that in the same vein, we should have pushed a lot of these policies that, nationally, have been recognized as good public policy across the board," said Sen. Sylvia Santana (D-Detroit) to MIRS on her SB 493. "We have an opportunity right now to run the legislation as is."
In 2022, the MDOC had a prison intake of 5,644, representing a 36.8 percent increase from the previous year and not including additional sentences that were imposed on a current inmate.
Meanwhile, a December 2021 report by the U.S. Department of Justice published that in 2019, Michigan had a mortality rate among state and federal prisoners of 305 per 100,000, representing an increase in comparison to the 211 deaths per 100,000 in 2010.
From 2001 through 2019, 1,464 deaths – more than 63.7 percent – were linked to cancer or heart disease. In the same period, 25 deaths were connected to an “accident,” 27 involved a homicide, 42 were linked to drug or alcohol intoxication, 134 were listed as suicides and 132 were affiliated with a respiratory disease.
The MDOC is also overseeing a larger population of older inmates, with the prison population of those 65-years-old and over growing from 971 to 1,767 within a nine-year period, meaning there's more incarcerated individuals particularly vulnerable to age-related illnesses.
Under Santana's SB 493, which passed unanimously in the Senate on Nov. 9, a revamped Office of the Legislative Corrections Ombudsman (LCO) could kick off an investigation on a corrections facility following a complaint made by an inmate's family member or a prisoner advocate. The LCO would be responsible for assembling an electronically available complaint form, and the LCO would be authorized to consult and contract with “qualified experts” to support investigations, inspections and hearings.
Currently, complaints must be made by legislators, prisoners themselves or must be based on the ombudsman's own initiative in relation to an administrative act that is allegedly running contrary to state statute or department policy.
A prisoner, prisoner advocate or family member would be shielded from penalties that could be related to their complaint or cooperation with an investigation under Santana's
SB 493. The MDOC would also be required to receive notice 72 hours in advance when the ombudsman considers it necessary to bring an expert into a correctional facility flagged by a complaint.
But despite the legislation's unopposed success in the Senate, the bill is currently sitting in the House Government Operations Committee, which oversaw the initial adoption of three of the 163 House bills signed into law in 2023.
“I think the department has some concerns, but I think that their concerns are not merited. I think they believe that this, you know, may cause additional losses, but I think you are putting a system in place as necessary to make sure you don't receive a lot of lawsuits,” Santana said, explaining she hopes her legislation doesn't get further tweaked if taken up in the House, “because I think at that point, you miss out on what's necessary to make the bill what it needs to be for law.”
When asked why corrections and criminal justice reform might tend to move slower than other policy ideas in Lansing, Santana said she thinks politics goes into it.
“Quite frankly, we've had Republicans who have shaped the narrative that we're getting soft on crime in some respects, but the reality is that during the Republican Legislature, we had no problem running policies around corrections reform in our state, collectively and in a bipartisan fashion,” she said. “So, I think that unfortunately, the narrative has been presented that we're getting soft on crime, but quite frankly, we're not doing anything that we haven't done in prior legislatures.”
In October, MDOC Legislative Liaison Kyle Kaminski said the department's initial read of
SB 493 is that it increases the risk of litigation against the state. He added that the MDOC operates in a “very tight operational environment in terms of things like movement and access," and is concerned about the experts permitted under the legislation moving through their facilities “with really no limitations on what they're able to do.”
The bill does give the department the option to ask the new LCO to reconsider bringing testing equipment – such as that being administered by a contracted expert – into a corrections facility, issuing a written statement on the impact the equipment could have on its operations.
Several items opposed by the MDOC were either removed from the bill or modified. For example, a provision allowing department contractors and employees to make complaints to the LCO was eliminated, and language was added to ensure experts working with the legislative ombudsman are subjected to a MDOC-conducted background check and that their credentials and any licensing information are provided to the department three days in advance . The bill that was approved by the Senate also guarantees that the MDOC can search any of a contractor's equipment for contraband.
But the MDOC's opposition continues to be similar to Kaminski's earlier remarks.
“The legislative corrections ombudsman's office has existed for multiple decades here in the state of Michigan. The department has a positive working relationship, in my opinion, with the corrections ombudsman,” Kaminski said in October. “To my knowledge, we've never denied the corrections ombudsman or his staff access to any of our facilities. We've never denied the ombudsman or any of his staff access to any of our documents that they have the statutory authority to receive.”
