Senate panel OKs $15M to fix Michigan prison railings after 5 fatal falls
The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections and Judiciary, chaired by state Sen. Sue Shink, D-Northfield Township, included the plan in a nearly $2.3 billion proposed budget for the Michigan Department of Corrections, approved in a 3-1 party-line vote. The plan now moves to the full Senate Appropriations Committee as the next step in the protracted budget-setting process for the 2026 fiscal year.
The proposed expenditure was initially listed as $31 million in a Senate Fiscal Agency analysis of the budget bill, but that was an error and the correct figure is $15 million, agency director Kathryn Summers said.
In the latest in a series of articles, the Free Press reported April 16 that 42-year-old Ervin Robinson II died April 12 after falling from an upper gallery at the Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center near Jackson.
The Department of Corrections described Robinson's fall as accidental, but the Free Press has documented four other fatal falls from the fourth levels at Egeler and nearby Parnall Correctional Facility since 2020. The department listed all four of those deaths as suicides.
Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, a Democratic activist, former state lawmaker, and current Detroit school board member, said she lobbied lawmakers and community justice groups to take action after reading the most recent Free Press article and said April 25 she is pleased by the legislative action.
"It's heartening to see that Sen. Shink has prioritized righting this terrible atrocity that has persisted for far too long," Gay-Dagnogo said.
"This is the type of decisive action needed to ensure that no one else loses their loved ones due to years of state neglect."
Egeler and Parnall each have a similar tiered structure with four levels of cells that are accessed by walkways protected by railings that are 38 inches high, which is lower than Michigan workplace safety standards, according to state records obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act.
In August 2023, a prison employee complained to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's office that gallery railings at the two prisons were too low, putting workers at risk of falling or being pushed to their deaths, records the Free Press obtained under FOIA show.
Whitmer's office referred the complaint, which also cited concerns about prisoner safety, to the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But nothing changed.
"No hazard exists," a Michigan Department of Corrections official said in a Sept. 20, 2023, letter to a manager at MIOSHA. The agency closed its investigation less than three weeks later, without physically inspecting the two prisons, despite concerns raised by one MIOSHA official that improvements were needed, records show.
Since then, three men have died by jumping or falling over or under the railings.
Michael Snyder, the father of 37-year-old Wesley Snyder, who died in what was ruled a suicide after jumping from the fourth level at Parnall in December, told the Free Press the state has been negligent.
"If they have one death — let alone four or five, it just doesn't make sense they wouldn't have done something," Snyder said in December.
Shink said details are still being finalized but she wants to make prison as safe as possible for both prisoners and employees and she feels that addressing the railing safety issue is a priority.
Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization union representing corrections officers, said ahead of the subcommittee vote that many officers feel at risk walking on the narrow gangplanks outside prisoner cells, protected only by a low railing from a steep fall to concrete below.
One time, a prisoner dropped a heavy duffel bag full of his property from an upper gallery and it thudded to the ground just a few feet from where an officer was standing, Osborn said. There's always a risk of an officer falling or being pushed over the railing while breaking up a fight, he said.
The risk exists not only at Egeler and Parnall, which each have four gallery levels, but at Marquette Branch Prison, which has three, Osborn said.
"We would certainly support having some kind of additional barrier," Osborn said. "There's some danger there."
MDOC Director Heidi Washington, through her spokeswoman Jenni Riehle, has repeatedly refused to comment on what, if anything, the department plans to do to address the hazard.
Riehle confirmed April 18 that there was another incident at Egeler this month in which a prisoner suffered a broken leg after falling from the first-floor gallery, following an altercation with two other prisoners.
As long ago as 2012, a Michigan prisoner was charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to push two corrections officers over an upper railing, Michigan Court of Appeals records show. The prisoner was acquitted on those charges but convicted on lesser assault charges, records show.
Gay-Dagnogo said she still wants a state investigation into how the situation has been able to persist as long as it has.
This story and headlines have been updated to add more information and to reflect a correction to a Senate Fiscal Agency analysis.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: After 5 fatal falls, Senate panel wants $15M fix for prison railings
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