Gov.-elect Rick Snyder has told Michigan Department of Corrections Director Patricia Caruso, recently named the country’s top corrections director, that her services won’t be needed after Jan. 1. That’s not surprising, even though Caruso wanted to stay — governors normally bring in their own cabinets — but it does raise questions about the drift of the department, especially its nationally recognized re-entry programs. Snyder has not announced a replacement. I hope he asks former Gov. William Milliken for some advice (though Milliken told me today he's not interested in the job himself).
Milliken, who supported and is reportedly close to Snyder, has shown more guts and intelligence on criminal justice issues than any highly visible public official in Michigan. In an interview on commutations two years ago, he told me: “When an injustice occurs, a wrong needs to be corrected, and a governor is the only person who can do it.”
As a Republican governor, Milliken made mistakes he lived to regret, including signing Michigan’s notorious 650 lifer law in 1979. The law was aimed at kingpin drug dealers but instead handed out life sentences to many addicts and small-time dealers. Milliken later said that signing the law, eventually overtured by the Legislature, was the biggest mistake of his administration, calling it harsh and vindictive. He spent years lobbying and speaking about smarter and more humane criminal justice policies.
Whoever follows Caruso would do well not to throw out efforts to rightsize Corrections, or prisoner re-entry programs that aim to give parolees a better chance to succeed in the community. The administration closed 13 of the state’s 47 prisons while crime rates went down, and Michigan’s re-entry programs got national and even international attention. This month, the Association of State Correctional Administrators named Caruso outstanding director.
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