(C) Minnesota Reformer
This story was originally published by Minnesota Reformer and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Closing Stillwater can be the start of a safer, less incarcerated Minnesota • Minnesota Reformer [1]

['David Boehnke', 'Erin Zamoff', 'Emilia González Avalos', 'Dwight Hobbes', 'More From Author', 'July', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline']

Date: 2025-07-17

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:

Nearly half of incarcerated people — 45% — are not there for having harmed a person. One out of every 10 prisoners are seriously and persistently mentally ill. A majority of prison admissions are the revolving door of poverty, homelessness, addiction and untreated mental illness that prisons make worse rather than solve

As for those who have committed violent crimes, we’ve obtained DOC data that 80% of those on 15+ year sentences are at the lowest risk of returning to prison upon release, while 2,000 low-risk people are eligible for community-based work release under state law — but denied by prison policy.

One in five people in prison are over 55 years old. That’s right: 20% are nearing retirement age.

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.

If Democrats follow the law they wrote, the MRRA will free up enough beds to close Stillwater without a hitch, with funds reinvested in programming and victims. Put half the savings from closing Stillwater — $25 million every year — into transitional housing and work release sites, dramatically reducing recidivism and improving community stability. The sale of the land will have further benefits and should ensure a just transition for Stillwater staff. Use the MRRA and Stillwater closure as a moment to empower incarcerated people, staff and the community to change policy and practice. If we are all at the table with good faith, magic will begin to happen. The Legislature can open a door with common sense laws that allows St. Cloud to be closed and the dangerous Rush City prison to be single-bunked — at no risk to the public and with no new beds . How? Divert an increasing share of nonviolent sentences away from prison. Allow low-risk people on long sentences to earn a return home, in part by repairing the harm they’ve caused in their communities. Money saved by closing St. Cloud can be reinvested on front-end prevention in housing, treatment and mental health, particularly needed in Greater Minnesota — creating a cycle, and a policy of more safety at lower cost . Finally, safety cannot be the norm until we end the legal slavery that traps prisoners and whole communities in poverty, and this can be done now. Slavery is still legal in prison, and can be ended in a way that saves money for taxpayers. Besides the moral danger of legal slavery, prisoners making minimum wages instead of forced labor at $0.25 an hour would allow them to come out of prison set up to succeed, not homeless. Real wages would also provide money for families and victims and children receiving restitution and child support, lifting up whole communities, and bolstering public safety. With slavery ended and Pell Grants restored, people could come home with businesses and college degrees — creating new cycles of repair, wellness and leadership.

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?

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/07/17/closing-stillwater-can-be-the-start-of-a-safer-less-incarcerated-minnesota/

Published and (C) by Minnesota Reformer
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/MnReformer/