According to Rocca, $2.8 million in the Michigan Department of Corrections budget that is currently paying 36 prison chaplains to minister to prisoners incarcerated in Michigan’s penal system could be instead used to fund the crime labs set to close in Sterling Heights and Marquette.

“What has always struck me as an expenditure we don’t need is prison chaplains,” said Rocca, who said he searched for something “low-priority” in the budget that could be cut to make funding available to keep both crime labs open. “It is certainly not my intent to disparage the work of these chaplains, but other states are doing just fine with chaplains who volunteer their services in prisons, and Michigan’s current budget situation dictates that we make tough decisions to fund services that are essential to the citizens of this state.”

The plan is currently being drafted into legislation before the bill can be introduced, which will take at least two weeks. In the plan, Rocca proposes using approximately $2 million that would be cut from the MDOC budget to create a fund for the crime labs and to replace the full-time salaried prison chaplains with volunteers.

However, MDOC spokesman Russ Marlan maintains that many volunteers are already used in Michigan’s prison system and the chaplains are needed to coordinate the religious activities for the state’s more than 50,000 prisoners.

“I’m not sure if (Rocca) knows, but we have hundreds of volunteers,” Marlan said. “These volunteers don’t provide all the services. We have about 50 correctional facilities across the state and not every one has full-time chaplain.”

Marlan said chaplains are vital because they oversee training and placement of volunteers, who are responsible for supervising religious gatherings to ensure they are not used for a terrorist group or gang activity, and for helping prisoners deal positively with family issues.

“Another important thing they do is establish contacts in the community for the prisoners’ release and when they go back home,” Marlan said. “You could theoretically fire all the chaplains, but we’d have to hire another position to assume those duties.”

With Rocca’s plan to replace the chaplains with volunteers, prisoners throughout the state would still be assured their right to religious freedom.

“Other states find prison chaplains on a voluntary basis, because they have a calling,” Rocca said. “I imagine Michigan can, too.”

But Marlan said since the MDOC is the fifth-largest prison facility in the country, it’s difficult to use only volunteers to offer religious services to prisoners.

“I’m sure that some states like Maine, with as many prisoners in their entire state as we have in one facility, can do it,” Marlan said. “It’s not something that’s feasible here with the size of our prison population.”

Because closing the Sterling Heights crime lab would hinder police investigations and inconvenience officers who would have to spend more time driving evidence to another lab, Rocca believes reallocating the money is a higher priority than keeping paid chaplains. He said the prisoners would still receive services they need, just without adding to the state’s budget.

“Our local law enforcement agencies have made it very clear that the closure of this lab will result in increased costs and delayed justice for crime victims,” Rocca said. “Justice and the wise use of taxpayer resources demand that we reallocate these millions of dollars to our crime lab.”

Having full-time chaplains coordinating the hundreds of volunteers offers more stability and productivity, Marlan said. “With volunteers, after they’ve gone through the training and after a week, they say they don’t want to do this anymore,” and then new volunteers must be trained, he said.

However, Marlan said the MDOC is not opposed to seeing what Rocca’s new legislation entails.

“If (Rocca) has 36 people lined up to do these jobs for free, full-time, that’s something we’d look at,” Marlan said.