it is true that this particular conglomeration of prison reforms has kept people behind bars for longer and longer, and that Truth In Sentencing in particular needs to be repealed, like, yesterday. Enthusiasm for the bill from outside organizers and prisoners alike shouldn't be diminished, but as we know, most prison reforms can and do create and maintain arbitrary and repressive distinctions between prisoners who "deserve" to be release and those who don't (the distinction between "non-violent" and "violent" offenders; "innocent/wrongfully convicted" versus, lol, not that; "good" and "bad" immigrants) -- and we know that Good Time could and would be barred for people, like our comrade Jonathan Summers, who are classified as "Security Threat Group" or STG.

read about Jonathan's skepticism about the Good Time Bill and his analysis of STG here: https://michiganabolition.org/2023/08/18/new-zine-from-inside-the-mdoc-stg-good-time-and-the-malicious-demons-of-coercion-by-jonathan-summers/

It is significant that the restoration of Good Time, on its own, has both been blocked by MI AG Dana Nessel, but that doesn't make the bill a panacea to the litany of problems that are present in the Nation article (let alone the ones that didn't make it in...)

#Michigan #TruthInSentencing #GoodTimeBill #STG #AbolitionNOW

the article in the Nation focuses on hopelessness ("'There is nothing to do... So what do people do? Drugs. I’ve seen so many people develop addictions in here just trying to kill the time.' ... This isn’t good for the people incarcerated or the people working inside these facilities") and the prison as an unsafe working condition ("The union representing correctional officers has highlighted disastrous understaffing within state prisons, complete with stomach-churning quotes from MDOC staff about mandatory overtime and its effect on their lives and health") but not on the function of keeping Good Time off of the state books -- as Jonathan Summers told us, its to keep on warehousing racialized surplus populations.

There is certainly an overall crisis of liquidating and disappearing humans into Michigan's cages -- but is this a crisis of the MDOC? Or is this how the prison generally, and prisons in Michigan, meant to function? To warehouse people until they die? Keep in mind that a growing number of people locked up by the MDOC are over the age of 55 (source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/08/02/aging/)

should the good time bill be passed? yes
is the way that the bill is talked about in both Michigan-based prisoner justice organizing circles kind of weird? also yes
is one reform going to be enough? obviously not -- Good Time being restored and Truth in Sentencing being repealed would do a tremendous amount to release prisoners and decrease the number of people warehoused

but let's be honest about what the MDOC and what warehousing racialized surplus populations allows the state to do -- it is a process of preserving and recalibrating political power (prison gerrymandering https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/critics-say-prisons-give-rural-michigan-towns-unfair-edge-redistricting), it is the process of dispossessing and further waging domestic war on urban black populations in Michigan to rural white populations by transferring money, jobs, and power from places like Detroit to Ionia (for more, see our essay Containing the Crisis: https://michiganabolition.org/2017/11/16/containing-the-crisis/)