* Michigan is no. 11 in this chart of 38 states that have “slashed” higher funding in recent years. “Cash-poor state legislatures have gone to town on their higher education budgets, and as they’ve hacked away, tuition has risen along with the sums undergraduates have had to borrow. In total, 38 states cut post-secondary funding since […]
John Proos
Posted inMichigan Government
Are private prisons Mich.'s cost savior?
Michigan has shrunk its prison population by more than 7,000 inmates since 2006. Nevertheless, the state’s prison system continues to consume more than 20 percent of the state’s general fund budget. Now, some legislators are considering whether shipping some of the state’s 43,000 inmates to a private prison would, finally, make a dent in Michigan’s […]
Posted inMichigan Government
DOC doesn't know if prisoner release effort works
A new Auditor General report is going to cause some heartburn in the Michigan Department of Corrections and in the Legislature. It says that DOC has spent about $130 million on a prisoner re-entry program — and has no clue whether the program actually works. The Michigan Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative was a centerpiece of the […]
Posted inPeter Luke: Eye on the Capitol
Capitol conundrum: Fewer inmates, same high costs
Round numbers can provoke course corrections because they are easier to understand and, if large enough, shock the system. Here are a couple: 50,000 and $2 billion. The first is the inmate population barrier breached at the Michigan Department of Corrections in 2006. The department’s budget first exceeded the latter figure in fiscal year 2008. […]