Monroe Review

Michigan's youths are being locked up in detention centers for nonviolent, noncriminal offenses, according to a December report by nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica and Bridge Michigan.

The report said that children across the state have been put into juvenile detention for skipping online classes, refusing to take their medications, testing positive for marijuana or for disobeying their parents. 

In May 2020, a 15-year-old Michigan girl was incarcerated for not submitting her online homework, according to ProPublica. The girl, referred to as "Grace," who was already on probation for fighting with her mother and stealing, was found to be in violation of her probation by not completing her school tasks. 

Michigan attorneys and advocates said that this was the only case of a child being jailed for not meeting academic requirements during a public health crisis that they knew of, according to ProPublica

The decision is a blatant disregard of urging from the education community to exercise leniency and prioritization of students' mental health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

While the teen was ordered to be released by the Michigan Court of Appeals less than two weeks after ProPublica's report, her case of unjust incarceration isn't the first and it won't be the last. 

Although the state couldn't produce data on the number of juveniles in custody at a given time and what they were being punished for, Bridge Michigan analyzed federal data to find that the number of minors incarcerated for nonviolent offenses was almost double the national rate in 2017. 

Joshua Rovner, a senior advocacy associate at criminal justice reform nonprofit The Sentencing Project, said that the state is completely out of line with what the rest of the nation is trying to do, with many other states reforming policy on how juveniles are convicted for minor offenses. 

“The whole point of Grace’s story is not that this just happened to Grace,” Rovner said, according to Bridge Michigan. “There are hundreds of kids every year who are put in these facilities.”

The problem lies in very little statewide coordination or authority, counties acting with no oversight and poor data collection by the state on incarceration rates and trends. 

“Much of the world has moved on, but much of our system remains stuck in the mentality that has really gone by the wayside, that no academic, that no policymaker really still believes in,” Frank Vandervort, a professor who teaches and supervises at the University of Michigan Law School’s Juvenile Justice Clinic, told Bridge Michigan. “We have too many kids in placement. We do not have enough community-based resources. In many ways, we are two or three decades behind what is thought of in contemporary times as best practice in juvenile justice.”