Alongside the new House Judiciary Committee Chair Sarah Lightner (R-Springport) and Majority Vice Chair Brian BeGole (Antrim Twp.) House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp) lays out House Republican’s policy priorities on crime and public safety at a Jan. 22, 2025 press conference. | Kyle Davidson
While announcing the new chair of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Twp.) preemptively quashed conversations on several criminal justice reform bills, pronouncing them dead.
Flanked by members of law enforcement from across the state, Hall announced state Rep. Sarah Lightner (R-Springport) as the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, with Rep. Brian BeGole (R-Antrim Twp.) as the majority vice chair, and outlined House Republicans’ plans to address crime within the state.
“The first thing that I want to say to all the crime victims and to all the law enforcement officers in Michigan is the Michigan House Republican majority has your back, and we’re going to restore your trust in government. We’re going to reverse this trend so you feel cared about again,” Hall said.
Criminal justice reform advocates pan Democrats over stalled reform bills
Plans to eliminate cash bail and juvenile life without parole are off the table, Hall said, alongside good time and productivity credits, which would allow incarcerated individuals to shorten their sentence through good behavior in prison and participation in programs including vocational and educational programs.
Second look policies, which would allow incarcerated individuals to petition for a second look at their sentence after serving 20 years, are also dead, Hall said.
Hall also said Republicans would focus on recruiting, retaining and supporting police, pointing to a public safety trust fund as one policy to do that.
The Fiscal Year 2025 state budget allocates $75 million for the fund, which is aimed at supporting community violence intervention efforts in Michigan Communities and providing additional resources for police services. While House Democrats introduced policies that would create the fund under state law, lawmakers were unable to finalize bills before the end of the legislative term.
House Republicans would also work to restore funding for school resource officers which Hall said have been “defunded.”
Following the passage of the School Aid Budget for Fiscal Year 2025, Republicans slammed Democrats on its funding for school safety and mental health. While the FY 2025 budget included $26.5 million in grants for per-pupil mental health and school safety funding, the FY 2024 budget included $328 million.
However, the final budget bill noted that $598 million in funding — which was used to reimbursed schools for payroll costs for a reduction in payroll taxes — was intended to “be used to support student mental health, school safety, the educator workforce and academic interventions.”
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer later approved a $126 million supplemental budget, which she said could be used to hire campus resource officers, upgrade alarm systems, or otherwise spent to address their safety needs. However some Republicans remained unsatisfied, arguing it should have restored funding to the level in the FY 2024 budget.
“Our youth need to have positive interactions with law enforcement… So we’re going to restore that funding and then dedicate it to school resource officers,” Hall said.
Additionally, House Republicans will work to make the police a profession people want to enter, Hall said, noting that officers need funding to update aging equipment and arguing that “woke” prosecutors are not prosecuting criminals, instead prosecuting their political opponents and attempting to prosecute police officers.
When asked for an example of one of these prosecutors, Hall pointed to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, criticizing her for comments she made about Republican lawmakers and state Rep. Karen Whitsett (D-Detroit) refusal to attend session during the House’s final days in the Capitol last year, calling them “literally criminal.”
Nessel later told reporters she would not take legal action against them.
Nessel, Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson are expected to be the subject of expanded oversight efforts, with House GOP leadership expanding to include six subcommittees including one examining the weaponization of state government.
Hall also said Republicans would work hand in hand with President Donald Trump’s administration to address undocumented immigration.
“We’re going to push back and stop the sanctuary counties and cities,” Hall said, referencing cities and counties which limit cooperation with federal authorities in enforcing immigration law. Hall later said he hopes local and state law enforcement should partner with the Trump administration to enforce federal immigration law.
While Trump and his allies have repeatedly sought to tie undocumented immigrants to crime in the United States, many of Trump’s claims have been disproven. Additionally, several studies have found noncitizens are less likely to be convicted than those born in the U.S. including a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research which found that immigrants are 60% less likely to have been incarcerated than those born in the U.S.
A 2024 analysis from the Marshall Project examined policing data in cities that received a significant number of migrants from Texas since 2022, including New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Denver. It found no link between policing data and an influx in migrants, with these cities largely following national trends for large cities.
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