BIG problem!-----Coping with the Growing Number of Felons in Michigan – Mackinac Center

Coping with the Growing Number of Felons in Michigan – Mackinac Center: 
"The latest available data from the Michigan Department of Corrections indicates that Michigan courts delivered 47,347 felony convictions in 2016. 
Because some people received more than one conviction, the total number of people with new felonies is slightly smaller, but tens of thousands of Michigan citizens who did not have a felony record at the end of last year will have one by the end of this year. 
...We didn’t add a shocking number of people to our prisons (our prison population is in fact declining and we are slated to close a facility in 2019), but we ended 2016 with about 37,700 more convicted felons in our workforce and communities. 
...However, it's important to consider the implications of these statistics for our job market and social fabric, for about 95 percent of those who received a conviction and were incarcerated will eventually be released.

• In about 200 state-licensed occupations, a worker who gets a felony conviction stands to lose his license, even if the nature of the crime is completely unrelated to the nature of his job. 
• When licensed (and usually skilled) workers are barred from well-paying jobs, several harms occur. Most obviously, their income may decline and poverty will increase. 
• Employers (many of whom already report labor shortages) will suffer from a lack of employees. 
• That lack of employees, in turn, can harm consumers. 
• We see this in a quiet shortage of housing, which can be blamed in part on a lack of skilled trades workers.
• Felony convictions also create a host of other consequences: They pose barriers to housing and education as well as employment, not to mention create a social stigma. 
• Multiply that by tens of thousands of individuals, and what we’re left with isn’t good.

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