By The Center for Crime and Justice Institute

To understand the scope and the urgency of these challenges in Minnesota, state leaders sought assistance from the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI), funded by Arnold Ventures, to examine aspects of the state’s criminal justice system. This assessment included an examination of past and current prison population trends, prison conditions in the oldest prison facilities, and the costs associated with potential solutions. CJI analyzed publicly available data, performed statutory analysis, and interviewed criminal justice practitioners and stakeholders, including system-impacted individuals, attorneys, legislators, and staff at advocacy organizations.

The United States built its first prison in 1773 in an old copper mine. 1 The nation’s criminal justice system has grown and evolved, yet many facilities that the system continues to rely on were built in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Minnesota is an example of this, with over 2,000 individuals housed in two facilities built more than 100 years ago. 2 Continued use of these facilities is problematic as their structures prohibit the programming necessary for effective rehabilitation, and the conditions within their walls create dangerous safety and health hazards for staff and those incarcerated. 3 Since 1990, Minnesota’s prison population rose steadily until it peaked at over 10,000 people in 2016. The prison population declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it did nationally. However, post-pandemic, the population climbed, from 7,300 incarcerated people in 2021 to 8,277 in January 2025. 4,5 As of January 2025, the 109-year-old prison in Stillwater houses more than 1,100 people, and the 135-year-old prison in St. Cloud houses nearly 950 people.6,7 The dangerous conditions within these two facilities present an urgent need to act. Since 2023, there have been major disruptions in operations at both facilities. Individuals in custody refuse to return to their cells, and violent incidents that necessitate lockdowns further create stress and frustration inside the prison gates.8,9,10 This assessment found: • While Minnesota’s prison population and incarceration rate are below the national average, they are rising at a faster pace than the national rate. 11 • Stillwater and St. Cloud house a significant number of incarcerated individuals whom other facilities would have to accommodate if either facility had to shut down. 12 • The conditions at these facilities limit opportunities for programming, education, vocational training, and, thus, the ability for incarcerated individuals to earn credit to receive time off their sentences and to prepare to integrate successfully into their communities. 13,14 • While the recent passage of the Minnesota Rehabilitation and Reinvestment Act (MRRA) and other similar pieces of legislation are expected to reduce the amount of time incarcerated individuals serve in the state and, ultimately, the size of the overall prison system,15 these impacts will not be immediate. As the state waits to see these legislative efforts bear fruit, immediate steps are necessary to improve public safety, reduce recidivism, and improve the safety of the people who live and work in the prison system. This examination, which includes ways other states addressed similar challenges, will enable state leaders to make informed decisions about potential next steps to achieve these goals.

Boston: The Crime and Justice Institute (CJI)2025. 20p.

By Sarah Jensen, PhD/JD Justice System Partners Shannon Magnuson,

Using administrative data from the Multnomah County Jail and interviews with people across the Multnomah County criminal legal system, including judges, attorneys, and law enforcement, and interviews with Multnomah County community members, including individuals incarcerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aimed to identify the emergency strategies selected and implemented to reduce the jail population, the impact of those strategies on jail trends and jail bookings for violence-related charges, and perceptions of safety during this time for criminal legal system stakeholders and community members.

Key Findings include:

Participation in the SJC, and the collaboration it facilitates, allowed local stakeholders in Multnomah to act swiftly to implement emergency jail reduction strategies.

Though the County implemented a few new strategies, they mainly relied on making small changes to existing SJC strategies, including expanding eligibility criteria for existing pretrial reforms, allowing for a substantial decrease in the number of jail bookings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Contrary to the narrative that reforms lead to increases in crime, the significant jail reductions achieved during the pandemic in Multnomah did not lead to increases in crime.

Three out of every 4 of the individuals with a history of jail bookings in the pre-pandemic period did not experience a new jail booking for any reason after March 2020.

Bookings for violence-related charges did not increase, including for individuals who had a history of violence prior to the pandemic.

Though Multnomah County staff and community members reported feeling unsafe during the pandemic, it was attributed to a combination of COVID-19, limited local police presence, the militarized federal police presence during the protests, and social disorder, visible drug use, and property damage from the protests rather than person crimes or crimes with weapons.

By Erin Thorvaldson and Kendric Holder

To address various criminal justice challenges, from 2014 to 2015, Alabama partnered with The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center to employ a Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) approach and analyze the state’s criminal justice data, interview stakeholders from across the criminal justice system, and work with policymakers to develop data-driven policy options designed to reduce prison overcrowding and increase public safety. As a result of this work, Alabama leaders enacted Act 2015-185 in May 2015, which aimed to strengthen community-based supervision, divert people convicted of the lowest-level drug and property offenses from prison to Community Corrections Programs, and ensure supervision for everyone upon release from prison to reduce recidivism. This brief explores how Alabama has addressed its JRI goals since enacting this legislation.

New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2024. 5p.

By U.K. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ’s) and HM Prison and Probation Service’s (HMPPS’s) failure to increase prison capacity in line with demand has led to a prison estate in crisis. Their plans to deliver 20,000 additional prison places in England and Wales by the mid–2020s have been delayed by approximately five years until 2031, and will cost at least £4.2 billion more than planned. MoJ’s and HMPPS’s original plans were unrealistic and they did not work effectively with others in Government to address delivery risks. As at September 2024, HMPPS had delivered just 6,518 additional places, and its plans to deliver the remaining 14,000 are still subject to significant risk. The Lord Chancellor, in her December 2024 announcement of MoJ’s 10–year prison capacity strategy, emphasised the continued need for prison places, as it projected the prison population to increase by an average of 3,000 annually over the coming years. As a result of poor planning and delays, the adult male prison estate was operating at 98.0% to 99.7% occupancy between October 2022 and August 2024 and remains alarmingly full. Overcrowding is endemic, staff are overburdened, and access to services and purposeful activity is poor. The current prison system has had to focus on ensuring there are sufficient places to house prisoners. While the efforts of HMPPS staff to avert disaster are admirable, this state of crisis undermines their efforts to rehabilitate prisoners and reduce reoffending. It also represents poor value for money for the taxpayer, with MoJ and HMPPS unable to make sufficient progress on maintaining existing cells, and needing to rent police cells due to a lack of capacity. MoJ and HMPPS have relied on the early release of prisoners to prevent total gridlock in the criminal justice system. Despite releasing thousands of prisoners early, MoJ still forecasts it will run out of capacity by early 2026. It is relying on the ongoing independent Sentencing Review to prevent this. However, any decisions to divert more people from prison will likely increase pressures on other parts of the system, particularly the Probation Service, which already has issues with staff shortages and high caseloads. This Committee has recently reported on the Crown Court backlog, which is significantly delaying access to justice. Courts and prisons cannot be viewed in isolation: creating sufficient capacity in prisons is vital to enabling a reduction in the courts backlog, and in turn if the courts backlog is reduced this will decrease the number of people on remand. If prisons continue to operate at near–full capacity, this will exacerbate the backlog and stymie efforts to improve efficiency in the justice system.  

London: House of Commons, 2025. 27p.

By Magnus Lofstrom and Brandon Martin, with research support from Sean Cremin

Key Takeaways: Since a 2009 federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding, California has been at the forefront of reforms aimed at reducing incarceration. One critical reform, Proposition 47—passed by voters in 2014— continues to be at the center of policy discussions. Under Prop 47, prison and jail populations plummeted as did arrests for drug and property crimes after certain offenses were reclassified from felonies to misdemeanors. Furthermore, lower prison populations and expenditures have led to $800 million so far in savings that provided funding for treatment and diversion programs. But Prop 47 may not be the most important change to the criminal justice system in recent years; the pandemic brought challenges that have had lasting impacts on incarceration and enforcement. Driven by larcenies, property crime jumped after Prop 47 compared to the nation and comparison states; with no further deviations until 2021, partly driven by commercial burglaries. Violent crime also diverged over the last decade, with the sharpest deviation at the start of the pandemic. Two years after Prop 47, California’s clearance rate—or reported crimes that lead to an arrest and referral to prosecution—for property crime dropped 3 percent. It then dropped 7 percent in 2022, signaling that a person is half as likely to be apprehended for property crime today, compared to 2014. The clearance rate for violent crime has remained relatively stable for two decades. Jail and prison populations have dropped by a total of 30 percent, but the impact on crime has been modest and limited. With Prop 47, only a rise in auto thefts (3.9%) and car break-ins (3.7%) is tied to lower incarceration; with the pandemic, it was a rise in auto thefts (1.6%) and commercial burglaries (2.1%). After Prop 47, lower clearance rates for larceny (theft without force or threat of force) led to a modest rise in property crime, with more burglaries (2.9%), auto thefts (1.7%), and larcenies (1.1%). After the pandemic, lower larceny clearance rates led to a rise in car accessory thefts (7.3%) and car break-ins (3.9%); burglary clearance rates also dropped, raising commercial burglaries (3.2%). No evidence suggests that changes in drug arrests after Prop 47 or after the pandemic led to any increases in crime. Due to data limitations, we were not able to assess whether Prop 47 or the pandemic led to any changes in substance use and addiction. Focusing on retail theft, fewer cleared property crimes after both Prop 47 and the pandemic led to a rise in commercial burglaries; a drop in the jail population post-pandemic is also tied to a rise in commercial burglaries. Evidence is clearer that retail theft increased due to pandemic responses by the criminal justice system, and the increases were of greater magnitude than increases due to Prop 47. This report builds on our previous research and is the culmination of a year-long effort to examine the impact of Proposition 47 as the reform approaches its 10th anniversary, as well as the impact of the pandemic-related criminal justice responses; it is not an analysis of recently enacted or proposed legislation or upcoming ballot initiatives such as Proposition 36. Determining the factors that can reverse falling rates for cleared property crimes—and in turn raise the likelihood of being apprehended—should be a top priority for California’s policymakers. Legislators also should seek evidence-based alternatives to incarceration, which shows limited success with preventing crime. Understanding these factors and alternatives is vital to developing criminal justice policies, especially as research consistently finds that increasing the likelihood of being apprehended is a more effective strategy for preventing crime than harsher penalties or longer sentences.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2024. 35p.

By The Howard League for Penal Reform

Over the half-century that we have been involved in the law, custodial sentence lengths have approximately doubled and the same is true of prison numbers. The connection between the two is obvious. Over time, the growing prison population has outstripped safe and decent accommodation. As a consequence, prison overcrowding prevents the rehabilitation that should take place to reduce reoffending. There is nothing that justifies this doubling of sentence lengths. Government legislation relating to sentencing has consistently provided that imprisonment should only be imposed if there is no suitable alternative punishment, and that imprisonment should be for the minimum period commensurate with the crime. The law dictates this. The problem is that there is no objective measure for deciding what term of imprisonment is commensurate with a particular offence. Nor have governments always been content to leave it to the judges to decide the appropriate sentence. Instead they have intervened piecemeal, by securing legislation to impose minimum sentences where crimes, typically murder, are committed in specified circumstances that are seen as aggravating the offence. The result of such interventions has been to raise the level of sentences imposed across the board, as judges, with guidance from the Sentencing Council, seek to maintain a consistent scale of punishment. The only purposes of sentencing which are served by longer sentences are punishment and, in some instances, the protection of the public. But punishment does not stop reoffending and is expensive. It currently costs about £50,000 to imprison an adult for a year.

London: The Howard League for Penal Reform, 2024. 14p.