The Michigan Department of Corrections has confirmed at least eight deaths of prisoners in two months, from mid-March to mid-May. Four of these are being investigated as homicides — a startlingly high number. The system had just one homicide in all of 2025.
What we know:
Further details are sketchy. All four potential homicides have been referred to the Michigan State Police, which is said to be investigating.
What we do know is that MDOC is under serious strain.
Violence and chaos
An in-depth report in Bridge Michigan highlighted MDOC’s own data showing a system-wide staff shortage, which has reached crisis level in some facilities—vacancy rates run 28% to 35% at five Upper Peninsula prisons, and around 22% at Bellamy Creek. Mandatory 16-hour shifts have become routine, especially at high-vacancy facilities; Michigan paid $118 million for 2.5 million hours of mandated overtime in 2024 alone.
The result is understaffing, predictable violence and chaos, burnout and staff retention problems — an ominous feedback loop. A recent legislative hearing highlighted medical neglect and inhumane environmental conditions. Bridge’s analysis of official data showed that prisoner-on-prisoner assaults and prisoner-on-staff assaults are up. Statewide use-of-force counts aren’t published, but officer accounts describe routine deployment of weapons like pepper balls and tear gas at high-vacancy facilities, such as Chippewa.
Apparently responding to assault increases, a week before the first of the recent deaths, MDOC Director Heidi Washington announced a “Safe Prisons Initiative.” But over two months in, public details remain thin: five “pillars,” a few facility-level adjustments and follow-on press releases without detail, much less clear targets or timelines.
It’s reasonable for the state to hold off on releasing information about ongoing criminal investigations — but the public deserves to know about the big-picture situation, and what MDOC is doing to keep prisoners safe.
We deserve answers
Did MDOC’s policies and practices contribute to these deaths? Were policies followed? Were there problems in staffing? Supervision? Training? How might any of the deaths have been prevented?
As programs like Washington’s Safe Prisons Initiative are developed, it’s vital that both on-the-ground staff and people living in prisons be consulted; those closest to the tensions also have ideas on how to address issues. Lockdowns and other restrictive policies are not answers to violence; they are likely to backfire.
The people who have died in MDOC custody since March were convicted of serious crimes. That is exactly why the state took custody of them. But incarceration is not supposed to be a death sentence; the state is obligated to hold prisoners, safely, until their sentences are served.
Eight deaths in two months is a crisis.
MDOC owes the public both an account of what happenedand real, speedy, systemic solutions.
Margo Schlanger, Harold Gurewitz, Natalie Holbrook-Combs, Tabitha Harris, Michael Puckett, Mira Edmonds, Patricia Maceroni and Patricia L. Selby are members of the State Bar of Michigan’s Prisons & Corrections Section Council. Write a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it in print or online.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MDOC owes us answers about Michigan prison deaths | Opinion
Reporting by Margo Schlanger, Harold Gurewitz, Natalie Holbrook-Combs, Tabitha Harris, Michael Puckett, Mira Edmonds, Patricia Maceroni and Patricia L. Selby, Op-ed contributors / Detroit Free Press
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