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A slate of Senate bills amending Michigan’s corrections code could result in early releases for some prisoners. Under the proposed legislation, offenders could earn “productivity credits” by participating in educational, vocational, or other rehabilitation programs, thereby reducing their time behind bars. 

One of the bills requires prosecutors to disclose to victims that a criminal is eligible for earning time off a sentence and early release. The legislation apparently will apply to offenders sentenced after the bill takes effect. 

Senate Democrats said in a release that the credits wouldn’t apply for the most serious offenses such as murder, sex crimes, and human trafficking. Still, some domestic violence advocates, crime victims, and law enforcement representatives spoke out against similar legislation in the Michigan House last year.  

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There are signs that earning time toward release reduces the risk of offenders committing crimes again. But claims that earned time credits themselves have a causal relationship with reductions in recidivism are disputed by victim’s advocacy groups. 

Police Officers Association of Michigan President James Tignanelli told The Midwesterner, “I’m always suspicious of anything they have to pass during lame duck session,” but said he didn’t see anything in the legislation he was opposed to. 

Tignanelli did say, however, that lawmakers could offer an immediate salve to recidivism by requiring cash bonds. 

“There is nothing that will create a recidivist faster than having a person arrested for a felony fingerprinted, photographed and turned loose without having to post bond. Many of these guys are literally home and eating before our guys get off work,” Tignanelli said. 

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“Recidivism is being perpetuated by no-cash bonds,” he said. “If there’s no consequence, nobody spends a night in jail, that’s why laws are being broken.”

That doesn’t mean, he said, that the productivity credit legislation doesn’t have potential. 

What’s at stake with those already incarcerated? A United States Sentencing Commission report on more than 25,000 federal inmates released in 2005 revealed a 49% recidivism rate, but for state prisoners, the figure is much higher. Michigan had about 32,000 prisoners behind bars in 2022. 

“[Bureau of Justice Statistics] found that 76.6 percent of offenders released from state prison were rearrested within five years,” according to the Sentencing Commission report. 

Age and criminal history were more highly correlated with recidivism than length of sentence, which exhibited less variation, per the USSC findings. In other words, among convicts released from prison or released into a probationary period, a sentence of five years or a sentence of 10 had little bearing on recidivism rates. But that doesn’t factor in time or, in the case of the Michigan legislation, productivity credits. 

 A Mackinac Center study found education and vocational training for prisoners does reduce the likelihood of winding up behind bars again. But what counts as qualifying activity to earn time or productivity credits and reduce time in jail might make a difference. 

One recent piece of federal legislation aimed at reducing the prison population, the 2018 First Step Act, reduced mandatory minimum sentences, eased sentencing for some drug crimes, including crack cocaine, and included earned time credits. There are some hopeful signs that the measures could reduce recidivism, but murky data makes it a difficult call. 

According to The Sentencing Project, inmates released under First Step time credit programs, per 2023 DOJ figures, had a recidivism rate of just 10%. However, that was as of 2023. The Bureau of Prisons didn’t necessarily implement time credits immediately or uniformly after First Step’s passage in 2018, and there was debate as recently as 2022 about when BOP was obligated to do so. 

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Meanwhile, the median time of rearrest for repeat offenders per the USSC data, was 21 months. It may be too early to tell how many felons reoffend out of First Step’s time credit programs. 

The Government Accountability Office found that year that the Bureau of Prisons didn’t have adequate measures in place to assess the risk of re-offense in a timely manner as part of the program. 

“Further,” the GAO report says, “while BOP offers unstructured productive activities for which incarcerated people may earn time credits, BOP has not documented a complete list or monitored them. Without doing so, BOP cannot ensure it provides transparent information.”

It’s unclear exactly whether inmates in the study were completing earned-time credit activities, what exactly those activities were, or that they’re necessarily effective, though the Michigan legislation specifies educational and vocational training and other programs approved by the Michigan Department of Corrections.

Senate Bills 861, 862, 863, and 864 are on the Senate calendar for December 10.