FAMILIES TORN APART BY MICHIGAN'S SENTENCING LAWS

Paroled after Michigan legislators, in 1998 and 2003, enacted
sweeping reforms reducing lengthy mandatory minimum drug sentences,
Angelita Able walked out prison last year and did what she had not
done in a decade: She made dinner for her daughters.

"The first time they laid eyes on me, we cried together," says Able,
now 33, looking at daughters Re-Nae, 15, and Roshinique, 12. "We were
a family unit and that was torn apart."

Wearing shy smiles, the girls sit across the table from their mom in
her sparsely furnished first-floor townhouse on West 7 Mile Road.

The eldest, Che'Nae, 19, has just completed her freshman year at
Michigan State University.

Across town the girls' father, Reginald Alford, 36, continues to
serve his sentence for the same crime that sent Able away for 10 years.

In 1997, police charged Able and Alford, who were living together,
with conspiracy to deliver, or traffic, in cocaine. They seized 433
grams and police claimed she had handled a baggie subsequently sold
to an undercover officer.

Neither had criminal records. "We're not the major drug players that
the law was intended for," explains Able.

Able received two consecutive sentences of 10 to 30 years each for
cocaine delivery and was originally eligible for parole in 2017.
After a series of sentencing reforms, she was paroled in 2007.
Alford, also sentenced to 30 to 60 years, might be released later this year.

Other than phone calls and pictures sent in the mail, the couple has
had no contact since their arrest, when their daughters were 8, 5 and 1.

Both spent time with convicted murderers who were serving lighter sentences.

While inside, Able earned her paralegal certificate and made dentures
and cushions. She also "healed" by keeping a journal - and writing to
lawmakers. So did her daughters.

"I was fighting every which way I could." Around the prison her
fellow inmates nicknamed her "Very Busy."

"I refused to give in," she says.

She plans to keep fighting for the release of others while working at
Detroit Property Preservations, dealing with banks and foreclosures,
a business that is booming thanks to the subprime mortgage crash.

Jedonna Young

In 1979, JeDonna Young had no criminal record and was a 24-year-old
mother of a young son when police found nearly more than a kilogram
of heroin in the Cadillac she was driving. The car had been a present
from her older boyfriend. He didn't tell her about the stash and told
police so.

It didn't matter. Young was one of the first people in Michigan to be
punished under the so-called "650-Lifer" law, which brought in
mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes involving more than 650 grams.

A decade ago, she was released after part of the legislation was overturned.

Today, the soft-spoken woman cares for her mother and mentors
troubled kids. "My worst day out here is my best day in there."

During her lost years, she "parented" a lot by telephone. Her son,
just 5 when she was sent to prison, is a father now, but remains
bitter about state penal policies. "He feels as though he's been cheated."