In 2006 and 2011, the Michigan state legislature expanded the Sex Offender Registry Act (SORA) originally passed in 1994, creating harsher measures that imposed geographic exclusion zones barring registrants from living, working or spending time with their children in much of the state; imposing extensive reporting requirements; and automatically extending registration to life without due process and without a mechanism for review or appeal for the vast majority of registrants.

As we honor Martin Luther King, Jr and his legacy this week, it’s important to examine the intersection of two issues that he devoted energy and attention to: race relations and economic equality. Though his fight for economic equality of the United States’ black citizens occurred decades ago, countless examples let us know the disparities still persist. One such example is in Michigan.

When the police don’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant, they sometimes employ a procedure they have nicknamed “knock and talk” to investigate further.  Courts have ruled that a police officer has the same right as an everyday citizen (for example, a Girl Scout selling cookies) to visit your house, knock on your front door, and ask to speak with you.  Unfortunately, abuses of the “knock and talk” technique are now rampant. 

A little more than a year ago, the ACLU of Michigan’s Racial Justice Project convened an important hearing on law enforcement best practices. At the time, the public’s alarm about police violence was at fever pitch, and to the extent the need for clarity about how to address this problem was not already apparent, the popular demand for answers drove the point home.

ACLU at the Michigan Capitol – May 16, 2016

In January 2016, the U.S.. Supreme Court settled an outstanding question in the interpretation of their series of promising opinions addressing the moral and legal question of whether juvenile defendants in our criminal justice system should be treated in the same manner as adults. 

DETROIT—The ACLU of Michigan on Wednesday will urge a state appeals court to overturn the conviction of Benton Harbor civil-rights firebrand Rev. Edward Pinkney, arguing that Pinkney was unfairly jailed in retaliation for his activism and political views.

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  This inhumane practice is condemned throughout the world and is prohibited by international law. 

Yet, in Michigan, there are over 360 prisoners who were sentenced to life without parole for offenses committed before the age of 18, including some who were as young as 14.  These cases even include individuals who did not actually commit the homicide, but were convicted as an aider-and-abettor or under the “felony murder” doctrine. 

The ACLU of Michigan has been working to abolish modern-day debtors’ prisons for the past seven years. As part of this work, I have observed courts and represented clients throughout the state, from Muskegon to Port Huron.

No place, however, has resonated with me like the tiny Detroit suburb of Eastpointe, where the constant incarceration of people too poor to pay fines—many of them black—eerily reminds of the sort of exploitative court practices recently uncovered in Ferguson, Mo.