In July 2014,Gilchrist moved back to Detroit,working for the city government under chief information officer Beth Niblock as the director of innovation and emerging technology. He created the Improve Detroit smartphone app that allows residents to report issues for the city to address.[6] He served as founding executive director of the Center for Social Media Responsibility,within the University of Michigan School of Information,from the University of Michigan Detroit Center.[5][7]
In 2017,Gilchrist ran for Detroit City Clerk against incumbent Janice Winfrey. He lost by 1,482 votes.[5]
Gilchrist was selected as a Community Change Champion in Community Organizing in 2019 for his work to advance social and racial justice in the United States.[12]
Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities
On April 9,2020,Whitmer named Gilchrist as the chair of a statewide taskforce examining racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic.[14] Gilchrist,later,claimed victory in reducing the racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths. According to a March 2021 study from the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices,the Michigan Coronavirus Racial Disparities Task Force “paved the way”for tacking racial inequities and reduced of COVID-19 cases and mortality among Black residents. According to the study,the task force helped reduce the average number of cases for Black residents “dropped from 176 per million population per day in March 2020 to 59 per million population per day in October 2020.”[15]
Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration
Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist in 2023
Gilchrist served as cochair of the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration,a bipartisan working group of officeholders,law enforcement officials,and stakeholders assembled by Governor Whitmer,in 2019,to examine the growing jail populations,which had tripled in 30 years,despite historically low crime rates.[16] The group held over a dozen meetings with the public and stakeholders across Michigan in “one of the state's largest bipartisan collaborations on criminal justice reform to date.”[17] The task force issued a final report with 18 recommendations,many of which were included a large package of dozens of bipartisan criminal justice reform bills passed and signed in to law by Governor Whitmer in January 2021.[18]
The “historic”bipartisan package was dubbed “a model for state-level policy change affecting local jail populations”by Pew Charitable Trusts.
Republican leaders of both legislative chambers praised the bipartisan package as an example of "putting people before politics" and "thoughtful and purposeful policies built on the consensus and compromise of a diverse group of stakeholders."[19] The legislation was aimed at protecting public safety,while helping thousands avoid arrest and incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenses.[20] The bipartisan package included bills to:
Eliminate license suspensions for violations unrelated to dangerous driving
Classify traffic misdemeanors as civil violations
Provide discretion to officers to issue tickets,instead of making arrests for many misdemeanors
Limit occupational licensing boards’consideration of applicants’previous low-level offenses
Seal juvenile records from public view and create a process to automatically expunge juvenile records for those who don’t commit future offenses
Limit the use of warrants for first time failure to appear for low level criminal violations
Eliminate mandatory minimum prison sentences for violations of driving,environmental and public health state codes[21]
Personal life
Gilchrist and his wife have three children.[5][22]
Italics indicate next-in-line of succession for states and territories without a directly elected lieutenant governor or whose lieutenant governor office is vacant:
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