I’m one of the last kids thought to be of ‘Boomer? status — I was made in Detroit, circa 1962 and born in January 1963. Like many kids of that time, I was brought up believing in a golden vision. That shiny, albeit trite ideal can be summed up in six words: Truth, Justice and the American Way. (Yes, I was brought up reading comic books.)
Another year older (and deeper in debt) I am easy to lose my train of thought, to ponder stuff; lots of stuff, stuff that I have no way of knowing the answer, but stuff to ponder none the less.
In one of my ponderous states, the idea of justice versus vengeance rode over the fast becoming flat recesses of my brain. As that thought careened back and forth, pinging the insides of my head like a bullet in hollow metal drum, it smacked into another thought. This thought dealt with Michigan’s billion dollar black hole of a budget Governor Granholm is in charge of.
These two thoughts collided at a junction in my brain called Larry Drum. Drum is state prisoner No. 222000. Drum, born and raised in Lake Orion will turn 70 this June. I wrote about Larry a few years ago, after a movement was made to free him from the shackles of state imprisonment. Larry and his friend John Martin were sentenced to life in prison under Michigan’s old, now repealed, 650-lifer law, signed into effect by then Gov. Wm. Milliken. Of the 280 people in Michigan sentenced under that law, about 120 like Larry remain incarcerated.
Court documents show Larry let Martin use his Birmingham apartment for a cocaine transaction. Which just happened to be between Martin and a snitch for- an Oakland County sting. For the record, Martin the dealer was paroled in January 2005.
Gov. Granholm refused to commute Larry’s sentence in 2006, despite a strongly penned letter of endorsement from former Michigan governor, Milliken. Since then, you and me (tax payers) have paid for Larry to have cataract surgery on one eye, medicine for high cholesterol oh, and there’s a growing concern over his prostrate.
I went sniffing around to find the cost to house a prisoner. A January 20, Detroit Free Press article, reported that cost to be about $32,000 a year. I am not sure what cataract surgery costs, but I am sure it’s a bunch.
So, here is where I am going. Larry has served his time for being stupid and hanging with drug-dealing friends. Justice has been served. Keeping him in prison is merely an exercise in vengeance by the state of Michigan and Governor Granholm.
Because she has not grown a backbone, the governor is costing the state millions. If she is serious about trying to fix the state’s budget problems, she (not a committee) needs to get involved. She needs to look at the big picture and see it is made of lots of little pictures.
Freeing Larry would save the state at least $32,000 a year. That’s 32 big ones saved that can be used to pay for one of the state’s 17,000 Department of Corrections employees.
The same Jan. 20 Freep article reported the state has 51,000 people locked up — an all-time high. The Department of Corrections budget is $1.9 billion, roughly one-fifth of the state’s general budget. Michigan’s incarceration rate is 40 percent higher than our neighboring states. The article reported the state’s parole board is ‘gun shy? on paroling, after they botched one last year. So now justice can never be served?
The governor needs to look at these cases herself and decide who merits a commutation. Currently she has a staff of attorneys and the like who make recommendations to her — which means they tell her which things would be politically good or bad, versus whether or not justice will be served. If she commutes only 100 people, that is $3.2 million saved.
Governor Milliken has been picked by Gov. Granholm to join another former state governor, Jim Blanchard, to figure out ways to fix the state budget problem. I’ve called Milliken’s office and suggested he suggest to Granholm what I just wrote. That was last week, and I have yet to hear from him or anyone on his staff.
Now that I am on the short side of 50, I would have hoped to be more optimistic, less cranky. I would like to believe truth, justice and the American way is more than political jockeying.
To read more about Larry’s case go to the search engine part of our webpage type in his name. If you want to write the governor, her address is:
Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm
PO Box 30013, Lansing, MI 48909.