Starting on 1 December, selected Michigan prisons will test a software tool that helps rank each inmate's security risk, from Level 1, the lowest, to Level 5, the highest. The Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) announced the pilot in a news release dated 28 October, the Detroit Free Press reported.
MDOC says staff will review the tool's score and make the final call. Reports tie the project to artificial intelligence, but the quoted descriptions of the tool leave its exact role open.
The Pilot Would Make Risk Scoring Partly Automated
Today, inmates are sorted into security levels, a process called classification, by hand using worksheets. Each inmate gets a numerical score. The new system would be partly automated and would update each inmate's information in real time, according to the release.
The ranking would rest on numerous factors, including the nature of an inmate's crimes, assessments by department experts, and how the inmate has behaved in prison.
Each level brings a different kind of housing. Inmates at Level 1 and Level 2 live in dorm-like settings, with more freedom of movement and more programme options. Level 4 inmates share two-person cells, and Level 5 inmates have single cells with further limits on their movement. There is no Level 3.
MDOC hired Recidiviz, a Utah-based nonprofit technology organisation, to help develop the system. A contract signed in 2021, worth $1 million (about £750,000), has been extended three times and is now valued at just over $4 million (about £3 million), according to state records.
Jenni Riehle, an MDOC spokesperson, said the new classification tool is the latest piece of a larger platform Recidiviz has developed. That platform also includes restrictive housing reviews and prison transfers.
MDOC Says AI Does Not Decide, but the Tool's Exact Role Is Not Spelled Out
The newspaper describes the contract as one with a firm that builds artificial intelligence tools. Riehle said Recidiviz builds AI tools that support staff with tasks such as meeting transcription.
She also said that 'AI is never used to make decisions about an individual's security level or release'. Instead, she said, the tool calculates an assessment score, which staff review and then use to make a final classification decision. As quoted, her statement does not say whether AI is involved in calculating the score.
MDOC Director Heidi Washington said placing inmates at the level that fits their current behaviour and needs keeps the inmate, other inmates and staff safer. In the release, she said the tool is expected to improve the department's ability to predict inmates' risk of future violence by 'approximately 30%'. The quoted wording does not say what the 30% is measured against.
Futurism said it is unclear how the state arrived at that figure. It said the kind of data collected will matter a great deal for the system's accuracy. For inmates, it said, the level decides which programmes they can join and who they live with for the length of a sentence.
The Officers' Union Says the Problem Is Too Few High-Security Beds
MDOC houses about 32,000 inmates. Assaults on staff and inmates rose 13% between 2019 and 2026, according to reports filed with the Michigan Legislature, while the prison population fell 16%. In at least four recent incidents, inmates are suspected of killing their cellmates.
Corrections officers tie much of the violence to a chronic staff shortage, which leads to more lockdowns. They also blame a lack of Level 4 and Level 5 beds. Officers say some inmates who should be housed alone at Level 5 are sharing cells.
Byron Osborn, president of the union that represents corrections officers, said the problem is not that the classifications officials now calculate by hand are inaccurate. The problem, he said, is that MDOC has too few Level 4 and Level 5 beds.
If the new system ranks inmates more accurately than the current one, he said, 'that doesn't mean you're going to have anywhere to put' inmates deemed a higher risk. An October MDOC report put 641 inmates at Level 5 and just over 4,000 at Level 4. He also said officers were not consulted before the pilot was announced.
In September, MDOC announced plans to add 870 high-security beds. Two new units, backed by $152 million (about £113 million) in funding, would add over 400 of those beds by 2030, MDOC said. The pilot is due to start years sooner, on 1 December.
