Garlin Gilchrist

Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities

On April 9, 2020, Whitmer named Gilchrist as the chair of a statewide task force examining racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic.^[17] Gilchrist, later, claimed victory in reducing the racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths. According to a March 2021 study from the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the Michigan Coronavirus Racial Disparities Task Force “paved the way” for tacking racial inequities and reduced COVID-19 cases and mortality among Black residents. The study further remarked that the task force helped reduce the average number of cases for Black residents “from 176 per million...per day in March 2020 to 59 per million...per day in October 2020.”^[18]

Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration

Gilchrist served as co-chair of the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, a bipartisan working group of officeholders, law enforcement officials, and stakeholders that Governor Whitmer assembled in 2019 to examine the growing jail populations, which had tripled in 30 years, despite historically low crime rates.^[19] The group held over a dozen meetings with the public and stakeholders across Michigan in “one of the state's largest bipartisan collaborations on criminal justice reform to date.”^[20] The task force issued a final report with 18 recommendations, many of which included a large package of dozens of bipartisan criminal justice reform bills that passed and became law in January 2021.^[21]

The “historic” bipartisan package was dubbed “a model for state-level policy change affecting local jail populations” by Pew Charitable Trusts.

Republican leaders of both legislative chambers praised the bipartisan package as an example of "putting people before politics" and "thoughtful and purposeful policies built on the consensus and compromise of a diverse group of stakeholders."^[22] The legislation was aimed at protecting public safety, while helping thousands avoid arrest and incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenses.^[23] The bipartisan package included bills to:

• Eliminate license suspensions for violations unrelated to dangerous driving
• Classify traffic misdemeanors as civil violations
• Provide discretion to officers to issue tickets, instead of making arrests for many misdemeanors
• Limit occupational licensing boards’ consideration of applicants’ previous low-level offenses
• Seal juvenile records from public view and create a process to automatically expunge juvenile records for those who don't commit future offenses
• Limit the use of warrants for first time failure to appear for low level criminal violations
• Eliminate mandatory minimum prison sentences for violations of driving, environmental and public health state codes^[24]