Safe & Just Michigan

From the Criminal Defense Newsletter

More than 6,000 helped in 2025 

Safe & Just Michigan is proud to have reached more than 6,000 people at 32 expungement fairs across the state in 2025.

Now that the final expungement fair of the year has taken place, we are able to tally up the numbers and take a look at what was accomplished. In 2025, we:

• Reached 6,008 people 

• At 32 expungement fairs

• 45% of applicants were eligible for help

We’re already looking forward to helping more Michiganders in the coming year — expungement fairs in January are planned for Benton Harbor, Grand Rapids and Lansing. 

Changes to court funding considered

In November, a team from Safe & Just Michigan and Humanity for Prisoners attended a Joint Committee hearing of the House’s Judiciary Committee and the Senate’s Civil Rights, Judiciary, and Public Safety Committee. The topic of the joint hearing is a newly released report from the Michigan Judicial Council (MJC) containing a new plan for funding trial courts.

Trial courts are supported by several funding streams, including general funds from their respective local governments, various state funds (i.e. grants, court equity payments), and court cost assessments. Whatever the fees individual courts assess, they keep. This is problematic for many reasons, but two that we will highlight here are the courts' perceived conflict of interest and the consequences of non-payment of court-imposed fees. 

There is a perceived conflict of interest because local courts, in concert with the city or county government they serve, assess and collect court costs and impose punishments when those costs are not paid. Judges should not be thinking about generating revenue to pay for court operations and staff while they are dispensing justice.

Secondly, since the courts have only judicial tools to enforce payment of fees, nonpayment becomes a legal issue. This is how poverty becomes criminalized. Individuals who can’t pay a fee are subject to show-cause hearings, bench warrants for arrests, probation revocation, and/or the suspension of driving privileges. Under the proposed system, the court would still assess fees, but the state’s Treasury Department would collect them and address nonpayment. Again, these are just two of the issues and proposed remedies. There are many more problems. The current system does not effectively serve anyone, including victims of crimes and the counties that administer them.

To fully implement the plan would require more than five years of coordinated work across all the branches of government. We believe the herculean effort would be worthwhile because, in the end, Michigan would have a judicial system that is constitutional, more impartial, and reduces the criminalization of poverty. We’ll keep you posted.

Help amplify Inside Voices

Inside Voices is a written by justice-involved people currently incarcerated in Michigan prisons that is published in our hardcopy newsletter. While space in the printed newsletter is limited, we are able to post more of them online for everyone to read. If you would like to encourage someone who is incarcerated to submit a letter, please tell them they can send a letter of 300 words or less on criminal justice reform, pending legislation, re-entry or related topics to Inside Voices, c/o Safe & Just Michigan, 119 Pere Marquette Drive, Suite 2A, Lansing, MI 48912. To learn more, visit us at www.safeandjustmi.org. If you would like to join our efforts, email us at info@safeandjustmi.org or sign up for our newsletter at bit.ly/sjmsignup.