By Jamie Meade
After Robert Martinson’s influential 1974 essay “What Works: Questions and Answers about Prison Reform” was published, the “Nothing Works” era ushered in “warehousing” prisoners in prisons across the country. The prison population started to climb in the United States reaching an alarming 2 million, putting the U.S. first in the world in incarcerating its citizens. Michigan’s prison population also reached a high of just over 50 thousand. The politicians’ touch-on-crime and lock’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach, along with the Parole Board’s life-means-life policy of the early 90s, fueled “warehousing” and mass incarceration in Michigan.
With Congress passing the 1994 Crime Bill, college programs were eliminated throughout Michigan’s prison system. Corrections officials implemented “warehousing” policies restricting prisoners from participating in educational, vocational, and rehabilitational programming unless they were within a few years of their Earliest Release Date (ERD). Lifers and long-indeterminate sentenced prisoners were prohibited from participating in programs and merely “warehoused”.
In the mid-2000s, influenced by the racial injustice and social justice arguments, the criminal justice pendulum started to swing back towards rehabilitating offenders instead of “warehousing” them. Social justice advocates called for the end to the mass incarceration era.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Macomb Correctional Facility (MRF), slowly spreading throughout the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC). All programming at MRF and around the state was cancelled. In the Fall of 2020, mandatory MDOC programming resumed at MRF only to be stopped, again, due to another COVID-19 outbreak. In March 2021, only mandatory MDOC programming resumed at MRF for those prisoners within months of their ERDs. No other programming has been allowed to start for prisoners with life or long-indeterminate sentences.
On March 23, 2021, the MRF population was given the opportunity to receive the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. Between 50 to 60 percent of the prisoner population chose to take the vaccine, while only 30 to 40 percent of the prison staff took the vaccine.
With just over 50 percent of prisoners and staff combined taking the vaccine, the only change in operations at MRF was the start of in-person visitation behind Plexiglas on March 26th. No GED classes, no college classes, no vocational classes, no law library, no library, no AA/NA meetings, and no self-help rehabilitational classes have opened for the prisoner population. The school building has remained closed. Prisoners cannot use the gym, weight pit, or pull-up bars. Outside recreation has been extended an hour and 20 minutes 3 days a week because of daylight savings.
With vaccines being administered at MRF and with MRF failing to return to any resemblance of normalcy, it appears corrections officials have resorted back to “warehousing” prisoners under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic.
* Jamie Meade is housed at MRF. He has a bachelor’s in criminal justice and presently pursuing a M.Div. from the Chicago Theological Seminary which is on hold due to the pandemic.