Advocates are fighting to pass stalled prison reform legislation

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) – Lois Pullano and Citizens for Prison Reform are on a mission; Let Senate Bill 493 become law so people behind bars can receive protection.

But the goal appears out of reach as the bill stalls in a Michigan House committee.

“This all started for me in 2007 when my minor son with a known mental illness was sent into the adult system,” Pullano said. “And I had no idea what was going on in our systems.”

Senate Bill 493 passed the Michigan Senate last year before being referred to the Government Operations Committee.

That's why citizens gathered at the State Capitol on Thursday to knock on the doors of House Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit) and other lawmakers in hopes of holding a hearing on the bill after a year of no action will be carried out.

However, due to a busy afternoon at the Capitol, neither Speaker Tate nor members of the committee were able to speak to the citizens' group.

The proposal seeks to make changes to the Office of the Legislative Corrections Ombudsman, the nonpartisan person who investigates complaints against the state prison system.

“It’s only a lawmaker or a prisoner who can, by law, file a complaint,” Pullano said. “Yes, he takes complaints from families, but that would actually anchor him.”

This is just one of several changes included in the bill. It also calls for public monthly incident reports from the Ombudsman and the introduction of an official complaint form that families and lawyers could have access to.

The bill would also allow the ombudsman to consult with experts who could assist in investigations, with final approval from the Michigan Department of Corrections.

To make their point, the Citizens enlisted the support of a research group from Michigan State University's sociology department.

There, students worked to compile data from Michigan's state prisons and compare it with data collected by the Michigan Department of Corrections. They soon noticed several discrepancies in their respective incident reports.

For example, while the Department of Corrections reported 88 suicide attempts by prisoners last year, reports from individual state prisons showed there were a total of 360 attempts. That's four times more than the state states.

“It's not just suicides that are misreported, it's assaults, drug possession, it's all kinds of incidents that aren't reported correctly,” said student researcher Sophia Futo.

It is this mixed information that Citizens for Prison Reform is trying to clarify and fuels hope that Senate Bill 493 will pass before the end of the year.

“We need transparency and accountability, and that’s missing in this system,” Pullano said.

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