Michigan's Department of Corrections has the lowest recidivism rate of any state that tracks and publishes the measure. As of the most recent reporting, 79 percent of those paroled in Michigan have not returned to prison within three years. For graduates of the MDOC's Vocational Village skilled trades program, the number is even better: 88 percent do not return. The department openly attributes this to its investment in rehabilitation, workforce training, and what it calls evidence-based practices. Michigan is doing something right.
What that means for the families of people currently inside Michigan's facilities is real but partial. The programs work. The recidivism numbers show it. But 32,778 people are still in Michigan's prisons right now, and the children they left behind at home do not feel the recidivism rate. They feel the absence. And what both parents do with that absence, with the access the system provides and the contact that is possible, determines more about what those children will carry than any program Michigan has built.
I went into the federal system, not the MDOC. I went in when my kids were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20. What I know from 66 months is that the system's outcomes are built on individual choices made inside and outside the fence. Michigan has built a system that gives those choices better odds than most states. The rest is up to both parents.
The intake period and what it costs families
When someone enters the Michigan DOC system, they go first through the Charles E. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson for classification. Michigan's intake process typically takes two to four months, during which the incarcerated person is treated as being in quarantine. During this period, they have limited movement, limited time outside the cell, limited recreation, and limited phone access. Families cannot visit during intake.
For children, this is one of the most disorienting stretches of the entire sentence. They know their parent has gone to prison. They cannot see them yet. The visits they were told would be possible are not yet possible. The intake period is experienced not as a transition into a system but as a deepening of the absence.
What the incarcerated parent can do during intake is use whatever phone access is available to maintain contact. Even limited calls during the intake period provide the child with something: the sound of a voice, the confirmation that the parent is somewhere reachable, the specific message that the situation is being navigated and will resolve into a permanent assignment with full visiting access. Tell the child what is happening. Explain that the waiting period is temporary. Let them know what to expect.
The MDOC provides a Family Participation Program Helpline at 269-339-0606, staffed to provide free assistance with establishing accounts and understanding the process. Families who are confused about how to set up phone accounts, visitation applications, or video visits can call that number before spending money in the wrong place. Use it.
Michigan's Upper Peninsula and what it means for families
Michigan's correctional system spans both the Lower and Upper Peninsulas, and some of its facilities are in some of the most geographically isolated parts of the Midwest. Marquette Branch Prison is in Marquette, in the central Upper Peninsula, roughly five to six hours from Detroit and four hours from the Mackinac Bridge that connects the two peninsulas. Alger Maximum Correctional Facility is near Munising, even further into the UP. Kinross Correctional Facility and Ojibway Correctional Facility are in the eastern and western UP respectively.
A family in Detroit or Flint or Lansing with a parent in the Upper Peninsula is making a drive that crosses the Mackinac Bridge, passes through the northern edge of the Lower Peninsula, and then continues into a landscape that is genuinely remote. The UP is a different world: snow in October, roads that close, small towns far apart. The drive from Detroit to Marquette is roughly seven hours each way.
For most of Michigan's families, the facilities in the Lower Peninsula are within a more manageable range. But for those whose loved ones are classified to an UP facility, the same realities apply that apply in every remote-facility state: the phone call, the video visit, and the letter become the primary substance of the parent-child relationship for extended periods. Michigan's facilities offer this access, and the ViaPath platform at midoc.gtlvisitme.com handles scheduling.
The decision Michigan's programs do not make for either parent
Michigan has invested in the Vocational Village. It has the Family Participation Program Helpline. It has the lowest recidivism rate in the country. None of that makes the fundamental choice for either parent inside or outside the fence.
My wife never said a word against me to our six children during 66 months. She had every reason. She had six kids in a situation I had created. She chose to let them love me without penalty. What I have with my adult children today is the direct result of that choice.
The parent inside a Michigan facility carries the same obligation. The GTL phone call, the video visit through ViaPath, the letter: all of those are the contact the child gets. Use them to be genuinely present. Ask what is happening in the child's specific life. Remember what they said last time and ask about it this time by name. The low recidivism rate Michigan has achieved is built, in part, on the evidence that family connection during incarceration reduces reoffending after it. The calls to your children are not just good parenting. They are part of what brings you home and keeps you home.
What the ages mean in Michigan
My children were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20 when I went in.
The 9-year-old who has been told the parent is going to prison and who then cannot visit for two to four months while the intake process runs is being asked to hold an open question with no resolution. That child needs the same thing every 9-year-old in this series needs: to hear directly and repeatedly from the incarcerated parent that none of what happened is their fault. Children under 10 build private explanations for absence. The explanation they most often reach is that they caused it. The intake period, with its specific and temporary restriction on visits, needs to be explained to the child in terms they can hold. It is not permanent. It is a process. The parent is still there and still thinking about them.
The 11 and 12-year-old in Michigan is navigating middle school in a state with distinct community cultures, from Detroit's urban environment to the smaller cities of the west side to the rural stretches between. A parent's incarceration is not invisible at this age in any of those contexts. The incarcerated parent who uses Michigan's GTL system to call consistently and to ask real questions about the child's actual life, who remembers what the child said last week and asks about it this week, is maintaining a presence that the intake quarantine and the distance were trying to eliminate. That active tracking is the proof of presence.
The 15-year-old is evaluating authenticity. A teenager whose parent calls from an MDOC facility to lecture them about their choices has made a private decision about whether those calls are worth their time. A parent who calls to listen, who can acknowledge honestly what happened without turning every call into a defense of themselves, will keep the teenager in the relationship. Ask more than you tell.
The 18 and 20-year-old is an adult making choices. Show up as someone worth choosing.
What the outside parent carries in Michigan
The outside parent in Michigan is managing children and a household while the incarcerated parent goes through an intake period with limited communication, then settles into a facility that may be hours away. They are also navigating the visitation application process, the ViaPath scheduling system, and the question of how to explain all of this to children who are asking questions the outside parent does not always have answers for.
What they need from the incarcerated parent is acknowledgment. One phone call where the person inside names specifically what they see the outside parent carrying and says thank you, genuinely and in specific terms, is worth more than any instruction delivered from inside an MDOC facility. My wife carried six children through 66 months and deserved to hear that I saw it. I said so as often as the access allowed.
For the outside parent in Michigan: the children will carry what they hear you say about the incarcerated parent across the years of the intake period and the sentence. My wife never said anything against me. What I have now is what that made possible.
How communication works in Michigan
Phone calls go through GTL/ViaPath ConnectNetwork. The rate is $0.0735 per minute, effective October 1, 2023, below the FCC cap. Set up an AdvancePay prepaid account at ConnectNetwork.com or call GTL at 855-466-2832. You can fund up to three prepaid accounts with a single transaction when processed through a customer service agent.
Video visitation and in-person visit scheduling are handled through the ViaPath platform at midoc.gtlvisitme.com. Visits must be scheduled at least 48 hours in advance and no more than 7 days in advance. Up to 5 visitors may visit at one time. Two separate visits on the same day with the same prisoner are permitted. Weekday visiting blocks are 3 hours; weekend blocks are 2 hours. Check quarantine status at the specific facility before traveling, as a facility or unit under medical quarantine cannot receive visitors.
During the intake period at Charles E. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center, no in-person visits are permitted. Limited phone access is available.
The MDOC's Family Participation Program Helpline provides free assistance with account setup and the visitation process: 269-339-0606.
For inmate location: OTIS (Offender Tracking Information System) at michigan.gov/corrections. MDOC general number: (517) 335-1426.
Federal inmates in Michigan fall under BOP jurisdiction. BOP communication uses TRULINCS for email via CORRLINKS and TRUFONE for phone. FCC rate caps apply; First Step Act programming offers 300 free minutes per month.
Where this leaves you
Michigan has the lowest recidivism rate in the country. It has built the programs that explain that number. It has a Family Participation Program Helpline that will walk a family member through account setup at no cost. It has a phone rate below the FCC cap and a scheduling system that allows two visits in a single day. It built a system designed around the evidence that family connection during incarceration is one of the most reliable predictors of what happens after it.
What Michigan cannot build is the decision both parents make. The incarcerated parent who uses the intake period to call every time the schedule allows, who arrives at the permanent facility and calls consistently, who asks the real question and stays with the real answer, who treats the 9-year-old's private guilt with directness and love, who tracks the middle schooler week by week, who listens to the teenager without an agenda, who acknowledges what the outside parent is carrying and says thank you for it: that parent is doing the work that Michigan's programs are designed to support. The outside parent who keeps the door open and speaks carefully about the incarcerated parent in front of the children who are watching is doing the same.
Michigan's numbers prove that what happens inside a sentence determines what happens after it. The children are part of what happens inside. Make the calls. Make them count.
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