Every year, Minnesotans spend over $535 million locking up about 8,300 people in our prisons: an astronomical average of $65,000 per person annually, the equivalent of two full scholarships to our state’s premier public university. As argued in a recent commentary this buys us little more than an inefficient, dangerous, time bomb — yet the author still calls for more spending.
When dealing with a dysfunctional system, however, the solution is not more money — it’s better policy.
Closing Stillwater opens the doors for a Minnesota safety miracle: You ready?
How did we get here?
Since the 1980s, Minnesota has chosen to inflate our incarceration rate by 400%, without reference to safety, dismantling decades of common-sense rehabilitation practices. Constitutional slavery — Article 1 Section 2 of the Minnesota Constitution allows for slavery in our prison system — was used in the early 1990s to force people to work or be locked in their cells, and cut wages to pennies. Conditions collapsed with cuts in food, recreation, health care and programming. Many sentences were markedly increased; college in prison was closed; computer access and free rides to visit were eliminated; fees increased. People were often released homeless, and parole violations increased. Partnerships were ended. Prisons themselves stopped being maintained — and the list goes on.
This empowered a culture of disconnection and unnecessary abuse of humans by humans in these spaces — justified by budget cuts or “public safety.” And while these policies and practices mostly hurt the incarcerated, collective punishment and “always obey orders” logic has made prisons toxic work environments for staff, too.
Nor are the people locked up who you’ve been led to believe:
Not so long ago politicians used to play sports with prisoners in Stillwater. It was and is still safe, but when was the last time you heard of your local representative doing so?
Troubling reforms and those to build on
Gov. Tim Walz appointed the good-hearted, reform-minded Commissioner Paul Schnell, who has overseen increased costs and deteriorating conditions but also some significant reforms.
How do we spend more and get less? One answer is COVID-19. Another is that most of the $200 million increase in 2023 went to giving correctional officers a 25% raise without being leveraged to sustainably transform the system and change how humans treat each other. Moreover, the people who know how to change these systems — the people who live and work there — are given no ability to do so, and are regularly punished for trying.
When solutions or accountability look like a threat, safety is impossible.
Similarly, reform laws are stalled or never implemented while punitive ones are rushed into practice. For example, the 2023 Minnesota Rehabilitation and Reinvestment Act allows 93% of prisoners to earn up to a 25% reduction in prison time through showing rehabilitation — with savings reinvested in much-needed victim funds and programming. Yet so far, literally no one has benefited, and new policies are poised to exclude a majority of those eligible under the law on their first day in prison.
Until we seek solutions, not cover ups, change not repression, and the full use of all the safety tools granted by the Legislature, our money will continue to disappear without results.
There are a few bright spots though. Thanks to federal changes, incarcerated people can now receive Pell Grants. And, thanks to the leadership of our state’s colleges and universities, higher education has returned to prison, and is set to grow dramatically.
And the MRRA is a powerful framework around which the system could be rewired.
Most importantly, the population has been reduced, largely due to our community pressure: Petty violations of parole are down by 750 beds on any given day, and over 450 people were safely released during the pandemic. The prison population was shrunk from over 10,000 to 8,300, resulting in the current 600 empty beds outside of the crumbling prisons at Stillwater and St. Cloud.
How reinvesting savings from closures can create real safety
It would not be hard for our colleges and churches, businesses, governments and unions to wrap their arms around the 8,300 people behind bars and make sure they come home safely. But we don’t yet work together like that, and we need leadership from reformers who run our prisons and common-sense minded people in the Legislature.
Here’s a plan, starting with closing prisons and using the last R in MRRA — reinvestment.
We can and must create a safety system in our state that works for taxpayers and communities — a next Minnesota Miracle.
Will closing Stillwater be the first step?