§ 05 — About this project
A serious public-data project with human defaults.
The source system was built to track. Inside Michigan is built to understand the system and the people inside it, making public data accessible, humane, and useful for reform-minded research.
Design principles
Four rules this site tries to keep
- Person before record. Names at the top, numbers below.
- Photos withheld by default. You can opt-in globally in Tweaks.
- No mugshot grids. Scale is shown through anonymized silhouettes.
- AI is a magnifier, not a verdict. It summarizes; it does not judge.
Method and limits
The app is a public-data research layer, not an official government service or legal authority.
Scope
Use the dashboard for aggregate patterns and the lookup tools for individual public records.
Limits
Do not treat the interface as a legal record, eligibility decision, or official source.
Staging safety
Lookup stays noindex and photos stay opt-in while public methodology and aggregate pages are indexable.
From the correspondence
They reduced me to a number the first day, and that number followed me longer than anyone on the outside ever knew my name.
Coverage
100%
All 83 Michigan counties
People
142,592
Unique records mirrored
Sentences
520,719
Across decades 1960s–2020s