Nonprofit organization Last Prisoner Project (LPP) is putting in extensive work to help free the 40,000 Americans still incarcerated for non-violent cannabis crimes in a country where cannabis legality is popping up left and right. 

The latest LPP report writes about the compelling and long-awaited release of 40-year-old Maurice Shumate, who, in 2016, was sentenced to three to fifteen years in prison after pleading guilty to manufacturing and delivering a controlled substance (cannabis).

It was just last week, on February 23, when Shumate was released from Cooper Street Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan. Out of the three to fifteen-year sentence, Shumate had served six. What makes his case even more disheartening is how the crime he was sentenced for is usually punishable by up to four years or a fine of up to $20,000, or both. 

However, LPP noted that Shumate’s enhanced 15-year sentence resulted from prior drug convictions, which were all around ten years old when he faced an Oakland County Circut Court judge.

Then, in May 2019, Shumate was looking to see if parole was in his foreseeable future, but he had to wait another three years to hear further discussions on the matter, which led to his release last week. 

After six long years behind bars for something that’s legal in many states today, Maurice Shumate is finally a free man. That said, the state of Michigan will be deploying supervisors for Shumate after his release, and there’s no say on when that will conclude. 

What’s just as troubling is looking at Michigan’s thriving cannabis space, which, according to Marijuana Moment, made record-high sales in 2021 with $1,311,951,737 for adult-use and $481,225,540 for medical cannabis. 

It’s no secret that cannabis is a tool for economic gain, and Shumate’s native state is really raking up the cash with the many legal dispensaries, licensed producers, cultivators, manufacturers, and distributors. But we’re still keeping individuals locked up for doing the same now-legal activities.

And this issue of race is still horribly playing a part in these ventures. If you look at corporate cannabis, chances are you’ll see countless white people making millions off the plant that others have been convicted for. 

What’s baffling is how Last Prisoner Project explains Shumate spent six years in a prison run by the same government that “collects from taxpayers for both his continued incarceration and for cannabis sales…the offense for which he was convicted.”