Is tough on crime the answer to social ills or do prison administrators need to employ a culture of humaneness in order to reduce the crime rate?
Desmond Tutu, legendary anti-apartheid South African cleric stated, “Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.”
Life in prison is like living in an endless battle. It is a battle for the heart of humaneness. Every day the battle is exactly the same in terms of sights, sounds, emotions and activities. Rather than rehabilitating offenders, the prison environment appears to deliberately convert an offender into a lifetime recidivist. After all, there are plenty of mindless and pacifying activities: games and television, and junk food, to name a few, but not enough rehabilitative, educational and vocational opportunities.
According to MI-Cure News, nearly a third of Michigan’s 33,000 prisoners participated in educational or vocational programs in 2025. That’s not enough. Over 20,000 offenders are left in the dark. The Dept. of Corrections must do better. Every prisoner must have access to a robust rehabilitative program, throughout the entirety of their incarcerated experience.
Rehabilitation is not a 12 week or 12 month step by step program. Rehabilitation is a lifestyle.
While there is a legitimate need for prisons, there is also a legitimate greed in expanding incarceration sentencing. According to the Crime and Justice Institute, Michigan’s minimum sentences grew 30% over the past decade (2016-2026). Did the crimes increase in maliciousness? No. Same crimes, harsher sentences. Higher sentences will not safeguard communities, it only exacerbates our social ills because it does not reduce recidivism. The sad reality is that prison is demeaning, demoralizing, which is a recipe for communal disaster for a large portion of returning citizens who are released into Michigan communities and elsewhere.
Currently, for the offender, acquiring rehabilitative support and resources in the MDOC is like mining for gold. The state offers limited resources to be made available for rehabilitation, therefore, it is solely up to the offender to patiently mine the best version of themselves, until a golden opportunity (educational, vocational, support group) is available to them. Mining the best version of themselves is no easy task in an environment that appears to be solely designed to extinguish morale, ethics, empathy, compassion, love and forgiveness.
To self-rehabilitate the offender must look beyond the culture of hate, established by correctional officers within the housing unit. Then, the offender must look past an emotionally arrested environment, which is comprised of a warehoused population who have no clue as to the root cause of their crime(s).
Many offenders are functionally illiterate. Many offenders struggle with cognitive disabilities. Many offenders struggle with trauma. Many offenders do not have the emotional and financial support of friends and family. Many offenders do not have friends or family. For those offenders, rehabilitation is virtually impossible.
The Brennan Center for Justice recently reported that nearly two-thirds of prisoners released in the U.S. come back to prison within three years. Two-Thirds!! The report states that prisons “are rife with violence, overcrowding, understaffing and inhumane conditions. Mental illness and education are seldom addressed effectively.” The Dept. of Corrections needs to do better. They can start by caring for the incarcerated so that returning citizens could learn how to care about themselves and their communities, rather than re-offending.
Those who are successful at rehabilitation are those who have a combination of the psychological and cognitive wherewithal to change. They also have friends and family support. A support system is crucial. Offenders need to hear from loved ones that they can change, and that they are loved and forgiven. Additionally, prisoners need books to expand their perspective, in order to identify and uproot destructive ideologies, beliefs and values that landed them in prison. These are books that inmates cannot afford on there own, but could be purchased and sent by their friends and family.
Despite the fact that many do not have friends and family support, prison culture would almost change overnight if prison administrations and staff utilize encouraging and positive dialogue when interacting with prisoners at all times. Patience and kindness goes a long way, meaning, it teaches others to be of like mind.
Providing and teaching humane treatment, humane living conditions, education, vocational and social skills is fundamentally crucial to a cultivating a “safer Michigan,” or any other state, because a culture of humaneness will enable and empower returning citizens to be an asset to their communities, rather than returning as a liability over and over and over again.
Who better than humanely conditioned, rehabilitated returned citizens, to be an example and a deterrent to those who make poor life choices?