Prison Radio
Eddie Treadwell

Hello, my name is Mr. Eddie Treadwell from Alger Correctional Facility here in Michigan prisons, who been locked up over 32 years, incarcerated without any type of real rehabilitation or any incentive to try to follow the rules and laws of the facility. I’m just simply being incarcerated, housed, and incapacitated – so they say – to prevent you from committing other crimes against the citizens. However, the Michigan Department of Corrections system does not work. It don’t – it actually produce that which it claims that it’s trying to prevent: individuals who have more of a criminal mind, who have been flop after flop in prison, and actually have built up a hatred for the system. So when they get out, they have a mean-hearted, cold-spirited individual roaming through the communities who looking to somebody to victimize, right? So the point is, is when you’re dealing with incarceration, is try to transform the prisoner’s mind into a more well-adjusted individual who have truly been rehabilitated, right? Or have an incentive to be rehabilitated, you know. Once you create that incentive to be rehabilitated, and knowing that they will have a earlier release, they have the tendency moreso to participate in various different classes and courses that will help transform they minds from that of a child to more of a mature type of individual, who are ready to reintegrate back into the community and be a asset and benefit to society as well as they families.

Now Michigan, for instance, is one of the states who has the most severe sentencing system that’s in place, right? “Truth in sentencing.” Which means that you have to – a prisoner have to do 100% of his time incarcerated, right? But before that, we had a good time system, which allows prisoners to receive good time credits to work towards early release based upon they behavior and without catching any misconducts, etc. And then they changed that to a disciplinary system, disciplinary credit system, right? But all of these systems that provide prisoners with a opportunity to be released early from prison has been wiped out based upon this idea of being “tough on crime,” right? Legislators use this as a stepping stone, a platform, for re-election, or to be elected, that they going to be tough on crime.

Now, we have various different celebrities: Jay-Z, Meek Mill, a Philadelphia football coach, and we have the [owner] from New England Patriots, right, Mr. Kraft, who all, advocate or claim to be interested in prison reform. As well as the Koch brothers, you know, who are actually billionaires as well. And they participate in various different forms of prison reform. But we in Michigan, the citizens and organizations here, are pushing and striving for more of a real prison reform initiative, which will allow prisoners who have been locked up 30, 40 years to be released from prison based upon these good time credits that will be accumulated to they sentence, right? But these people just, they talk and they do things in various other different states, but Michigan is in dire need of some celebrity support to get the light shined on Michigan need for prison reform.

I was a part of getting a good time bill initiated in 2017 with a representative by the name of Mr. [Martin] Howrylak, was his name. [Martin] Howrylak was a legislator here in Michigan who introduced the bill, House Bill 5666, which never left the committee. And since then, there has been numerous bills introduced and numerous organizations striving to get enough registered citizens’ signatures to get the issue placed on the ballot so all of Michigan can vote on the issue of good time, right? Now, just recently, you have a [Safe & Just] Michigan organization, who have done a study throughout Michigan with citizens who all agree that Michigan prisoners should be allowed some form of prisoners disciplinary credits. You know, it’s like 70 or 80%. You have 70, 80, 75% of the people who have been victimized by crimes who agree that prison – Michigan prisoners – should receive some form of rehabilitation, opposed to just being housed and being released from prison without any type of programming that would allow them to get jobs, take care of they family, and have some form of education and skills, right?

So, it’s a widespread support here in Michigan, but we need more supporters to help shine a light on it. We need people to help provide us with canvassers who can go around throughout all the little towns here in Michigan to gather signatures. You know, we need publicity, we need news media support, we need newspaper articles, and various different things to help show that the prisoners here in Michigan are deserving of some form of a second look on their sentences, to reduce their sentences after 10, 15 years. You know, you can take a look at the prisoners’ sentences and see that maybe the sentence was too harsh. You have individuals such as myself trying to create some form of a podcast or website where we can express our remorse to the victims of our crime. You know, how we are very remorseful and we would like to apologize for the crime that we committed against them. So the citizens can have a opportunity to release – relieve some of the pain and hatred that they might have been holding towards the prisoners. Right?

These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.