05/19/2026
Roughly 70% of women and 50% of men in state prisons have mental illness.* Most women in this prison could likely benefit from more appropriate placement, such as in the community with substantial participation in outpatient care, in transitional housing with outpatient care, in residential treatment, or in forensic hospitalization.
The harsh reality is that no matter where marginalized and medically vulnerable people are placed, the conditions they endure are atrocious more often than not.
Transitional Housing and AFCs:
> Humans packed in like sardines
> Unmet basic hygiene and nutritional needs
> Verbal and physical abuse
> Resident income and benefits co-opted by house managers, and house managers demanding higher paying contracts from the state without improving the living conditions
> Bed bugs, mold, no hot water, broken steps, drafty windows
Residential Treatment and Forensic Hospitals:
> Medically inappropriate use of force and confinement
> Verbal and physical abuse
> Heavy antidepressants and antipsychotics used to achieve compliance, rather than to achieve long term recovery
In these conditions, people deteriorate and move farther away from recovery. People die in these conditions. And we don’t hear about it until advocates are raising hell to bring awareness to it.
Marginalized and medically vulnerable people disappear and die in facilities funded by state & federal dollars. Are we ready for a conversation about funding better jails, prisons, homes, and facilities? Are we going to bury our heads in the sand, ignorantly declare “FAFO,” or are we going to demand better for human beings? Because we’re not sardines or subhuman or slaves.
People are going to continue to die if something doesn’t change.
Write to your representative: https://www.house.mi.gov
Write to your senator: https://senate.michigan.gov/senators/all-senators/
Tell them the problem, tell them the problem isn’t going away, and tell them you want change.
*This is an approximation due to varying statistics on this matter, likely due to history of mental illness being self-reported rather than taken from medical records. Which is not a bad thing to us— we believe individuals are the experts of their medical history and healthcare needs.
A woman died suddenly May 17 at Michigan's only prison for women, just four days after another inmate died. A lawmaker wants answers. See link below ⬇️
📸 Salwan Georges, Detroit Free Press
