After years without funding for prisoners to access higher education, the Michigan Department of Corrections is immersed in several efforts to teach community college courses and vocational training in-house to a small number of inmates who are near parole.

The grant comes nearly two decades after the federal government cut Pell grant funding to inmates and essentially ended postsecondary education in prisons.

Michigan will join a pilot project that hopes to gather enough evidence to possibly resurrect publicly supported postsecondary education in prisons nationally.

For the full article, see Kim Kozlowski, "Michigan aims to expand education for inmates; Goal is to boost employability, earnings of those to be released soon", Detroit News, May 20, 2013.

How critical is it for the Michigan Republican Party to get a U.S. Senate candidate campaign off the ground? MIRS debates the subject before discussing the subject with AT&T President Jim Murray, who is considering a bid. What does he feel a winning Republican candidate needs to avoid?

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Democratic state lawmakers from the Motor City announced their own auto insurance reform package Monday that seeks to drive down the rates that Detroiters pay as well as force transparency into a $14 billion fund for victims with catastrophic accident claims.

The package of bills, which remain in draft form, would restructure the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association to force it to hold open meetings, be subject to state sunshine laws, collect the MCCA assessment through the Secretary of State's Office instead of through insurance companies, and create a commission to track fraud, waste and abuse.

The bills also call for requiring insurance companies to justify rate increases; prohibit firms from considering the credit history, education levels and occupations of drivers in determining premiums and surcharges; and disallow steering damaged vehicles to collision shops owned by the insurance company.

For the full article, see Jennifer Chambers, "Detroit lawmakers present no-fault auto insurance reform plan", Detroit News, May 20, 2013.

Nearly one in five black workers in Michigan is unemployed -- more than twice the rate for white workers.

The unemployment rate for black workers in Michigan is 18.7 percent, compared to 7.5 percent for white workers in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a recent report from Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank.

Nationally, the black unemployment rate was 14 percent and the white rate was 6.3 percent at that time, according to the report.

For the full article, see Melissa Anders, "Michigan's black unemployment rate much higher than white rate, but why?", MLive, May 20, 2013.

The Department of Human Services is testing a pilot project in three counties designed to keep children out of foster care and save the state money.

Scheduled to begin in August, Lutheran Social Services will operate two of the projects in Macomb and Kalamazoo counties. The nonprofit, with one of its 44 offices in Sterling Heights, is a provider of foster care, adoption and family preservation services.

For the full article, see Ursula Watson, "State tries to ease load on Michigan's foster care system; Pilot effort offers support to keep kids with their families", Detroit News, May 20, 2013.