Category: NLA Newsletter

  • College in Prison: For Some, but Not All

    Author: Dwight Henley, MBA After the RAND research report showed recidivism significantly dropped as prisoner educational levels increased, President Obama issued an executive order to provide funding for further research. Years later PELL Grants were re-instituted for prisoners, and now colleges all across America are rushing to provide prisoners degree…

  • It’s Not What a Person Did: It’s What the Person is Convicted of.

    Author: Dwight Henley, M.B.A. Many criminal justice proponents and politicians tell the public that first-degree murderers constitute an ongoing threat to society. To support this position, they highlight extreme cases involving a serial or mass murderer. However, most people convicted of first-degree murder are much different from the serial killers…

  • Second Look Brings Second Hope

    Author: Mario Cavin Over the last 20-30 years, misinformed citizens believed that incentives to prisoners meant rewarding negative behavior. This led to the MDOC adopting a policy/custom of “let’s take this from them” and “they don’t deserve that”. After years of losing many things from good time and disciplinary credits,…

  • Enough is Enough

    Author: Mario Cavin Most of us put our lives in the hands of an attorney when we caught our cases. We assumed because they represented us that their loyalties were with us. Most of us didn’t find out the harsh reality until it was too late. And when we repeated…

  • Democrats: Criminal Justice Reform, or a Social Control Objective

    In the 2020 election Democrats highlighted criminal justice and prison reform. These agendas came as the United States faced significant protests over police brutality and rising prison violence. Black Lives Matter was holding protests throughout Detroit. The Macomb prison (in Michigan) experienced 12 unnatural deaths in 2022–in a prison of…