Jail fewer, group tells Michigan

DETROIT -- C&M Soul Food Diner co-owner John Cooksey remembers a beautiful east-side neighborhood where kids went to the local skating rink with their parents.

Now, one in seven men hailing from Cooksey's neighborhood of Brewer Park is in prison, on probation or on parole.

The declining area is like many across the country and illustrates years, and billions of dollars, in misguided corrections system spending that has incarcerated too many people for too long and allocated too little money to prison alternatives, according to the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Pew Center on the States.

The startling conclusion of a report issued by the center on Monday: 7.3 million U.S. adults-- one in every 31 -- is under law enforcement supervision today. In Michigan the number is higher still -- one in 27 adults, a four-fold increase since 1992.

Pew Center researchers say it's time Michigan and others realized the wrong-headedness of their priorities, which have poured nine of every 10 corrections dollars into prisons, while the vast majority of offenders are probationers and parolees like those living in the area surrounding Cooksey's eatery.

Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project, which conducted the study, said harsh prison sentences don't deter crime enough to justify their staggering $50 billion costs to the states.

"After an extraordinary quarter-century expansion of American prisons, one unmistakable policy truth has emerged: We can't build our way to public safety," Gelb said. "And new national and state research shows that we are well past the point of diminishing returns, where more imprisonment will prevent less and less crime."

Seeds in the community

Back in the Brewer Park neighborhood, roughly bounded by East Warren Avenue, St. Jean Avenue, Mack Avenue and McClellan Street, the Rev. Ervin McClendon is trying to rebuild his New Millennium Missionary Baptist Church and his community.

He'd like to attract new families and offer day care or a mechanic class in one of his vacant rooms. But McClendon, 67, knows that his biggest obstacle is cash.

"We just don't have the funding," he said.

Cooksey's modest establishment, not far away, is a warm place and haven in a neighborhood of 4,100 residents and few recreational opportunities. Senior citizens hang out and play checkers there on Sundays.

He'd like to shout at today's moms and dads.

"Do a better job with your kid when they're just a child and they'll become a better adult," the 81-year-old would say. "Maybe then the state wouldn't need to put them in jail or on probation."

His business has been broken into a couple of times, but he wants the government to do more than lock people up.

Once inside prison, they become hardened criminals. Give them a trade, he said. Teach them something to do.

"You need to have programs to help these people get their minds better together," Cooksey said.

The kinds of help suggested by McClendon and Cooksey are part of a new direction being fashioned for Michigan's $2.1-billion corrections system with guidance from the Pew Center and the Council of State Governments.

In a report issued in January, the Council of State Governments said Michigan could free as many as 4,000 inmates from its 48,500-inmate system by releasing nonviolent offenders who have served their minimum sentences in a timelier manner.

The state would devote the $262-million savings -- by 2015 -- to added police protection and programs to help find jobs for probationers and paroles, for whom unemployment runs 50 percent or higher. Some of the savings also would be devoted to additional officers who would increase monitoring and mete out swift, sure sanctions to those who violate the terms of their probation or parole.

'Moving into balance'

Michigan Deputy Corrections Director Dennis Schrantz said the Pew Center's findings underscore the need to reduce the number of prisons and devote more resources to alternatives such as probation, electronic tethers, drug testing and other means of monitoring. He said that's happening here.

"We are a state that's moving into balance," Schrantz said. "We're not there yet. We're spending $2 billion a year on what we're doing to them. What are we spending on what they need?"

State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, D-South Lyon, and Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-DeWitt, are the leaders of a bipartisan legislative effort that will put into effect the new rules and policies. The Legislature will have to revise statutes so that inmates are released from prison after serving an average of 120 percent of their minimum sentences. Today, that averages 127 percent and, in some cases, is four times the minimum.

Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans said he agrees with the shift in direction, based on statistical evidence that it's effective. He said as it is, 50 percent of people convicted of crimes don't re-offend.

"It makes an awful lot of sense that you can get another 20 percent" with spending on programs for those on probation or parole, he said. "Michigan has made some progress, but still has an awful lot of offenders who aren't properly supervised."