Natalie Holbrook

The last many weeks have been heart wrenching. Those of us who understand the importance of honoring not only our own lives but the lives that make up our community, are spending time working diligently at home and taking care of kids. Others are putting their lives on the line, going into the belly of the virus in health care and emergency worker settings across the world. Many are serving our communities by going to hourly jobs and clerking groceries lines full of uncertain and often scared people.

And, still others are going into the belly of a different beast, the virus in the carceral setting — prisons, jails and detention centers.

There has been an virtual silence from our state government around the 38,000 people in Michigan’s state prisons. Maybe it is because this is a segment of the population that is often ignored. Maybe it is because this is a burgeoning burden too big to really wrap our heads around.

I have spent countless hours with people on the phone and in person trying to navigate release for their sick and dying loved ones. This was before COVID-19. A few years back a medical parole bill was introduced that seemed promising. It had provisions to get elderly and chronically ill people out of prison — it did not have many caveats for carve outs — leaving the “worst of the worst” out. This bill was annihilated by the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan and other tough-on-crime law enforcement minded people who seem to believe that perpetual punishment is a way to solve harm and violence in our communities. It provides relief for very few people.

Flash forward to a pandemic. The governor could issue an executive order that expedited the commutation process, and perhaps she could put parameters in place to circumvent truth in sentencing and get more folks out of prison. However, that would take a kind of courage and a moral purpose that prioritizes redemption, compassion, forgiveness, accountability and transformation.

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This is all personal to me. I have met the most amazing, kind-hearted people in our prisons in Michigan. The majority of people who I have learned from in our system are people serving for “assaultive offenses” —people who did really terrible things many years ago. People who have changed in the decades they have spent inside.

People like Danny, who my daughter calls “Dan the man” and cannot wait to see when he comes to the office. Danny served 23 years for killing someone when he was 16. I trust him with my life and the life of my child. He is out because of changes to our laws for people who were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole as juveniles (kids change) and doing amazing work.

People like Demetrius, my colleague and friend. A salt-of the-earth, beautiful person who served more than 18 plus in prison on a drug offense and was released through a commutation by Gov. Jennifer Granholm. He has dedicated his life to helping the men he left behind in prison.

People like Tashiena, my friend and comrade, who has served 21 years for killing another person in a young adult brawl gone bad. She is changed and harmless and one of the most hilarious people I have ever met.

People like Chuck, my friend and comrade, who has served more than 38 years in prison. He has claimed innocence all along, but owns that he was involved in nefarious stuff that got him pinned for what they say he did. He is brilliant and would be an asset to all of us out here.

We are living in an abnormal time. Prisons are no place for anyone to live or work during a pandemic. Our governor has options to take courageous and unprecedented action. She should consider the longest serving people as the most stable and best prepared group of people to be released and bring them home and out of harm's way. By doing so, she will address thousands of cases she could not otherwise address and alleviate the rampage of COVID-19 in the prison context. She could save the lives of the incarcerated and staff. She needs to act, now.

Natalie Holbrook is program director of the American Friends Service Committee's Michigan Criminal Justice Program.