LANSING--The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan today announced the launch of a new project aimed at reducing the state’s incarceration rate, which is 31 percent higher than the Midwest average.

Through legislative advocacy and public education, the Fair Justice/Smart Justice Michigan campaign will focus on:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. detested violence. Nevertheless, during the month when we commemorate his birth, we must face the fact that black males between the ages of 15 and 34 were the victims of more than 15 percent of all deaths at the hands of police officers in 2015—even though they constitute only two percent of the total U.S. population.

It is a police-related death rate that is five times higher than that of young white males.

DETROIT--As Detroit civil-rights activists prepare to protest the recent fatal shooting of an unarmed Detroit man by a Dearborn police officer, the ACLU of Michigan today called for "transparency and professionalism" in the Detroit Police Department's investigation into the slaying.

Many employers require job applicants to disclose past convictions on their job applications.  Although this information may sometimes be relevant to a job qualification, some employers refuse to even consider an applicant with a felony conviction even if the offense took place in the distant past and is not relevant to job performance.  Such a practice can have particularly devastating consequences for communities of color, who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system as a result of racial profiling, the misguided War on Drugs, and other biases. 

Constitutional protections should not be guaranteed to only those who can financially afford them. And yet there is an ongoing crisis in Michigan's indigent defense system for those too poor to afford fair and just legal representation.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is lauding a state Supreme Court proposal that could end unconstitutional "pay-or-stay" sentencing practices in courtrooms around the state.

When Charlie Sheen publicly announced that he is a person living with HIV, I was struck by two things: Sheen shared that, since his diagnosis four years ago, he has been on antiretroviral medications and his viral load is currently undetectable (meaning there are so few copies of the HIV virus in his blood that tests cannot register it).

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – November 2, 2015

Bipartisanship is flourishing lately. Not so much among our elected officials – unsurprising given that legislative transformation traditionally lags behind public opinion -- but rather among some significant advocacy groups in some very critical areas of public policy, most notably criminal justice reform and citizen privacy in the age of high-tech digital surveillance. 

FOR IMMEDIATE USE

October 30, 2015

CONTACT: Darrell Dawsey, ACLU of Michigan, 313-578-6831; ddawsey@aclumich.org

DETROIT—As part of the ACLU of Michigan’s ongoing effort to end unconstitutional debtors’ prisons in Michigan, attorneys for the organization are slated to appear in Macomb County Circuit Court on Monday morning to urge the court to stop an Eastpointe judge from continuing to jail poor defendants for their inability to pay fines.