Case Explained: Why is Minnesota slow-walking its prison reform law? • Minnesota Reformer – Legal Perspective

We’re heartened to see even the smallest increase in human dignity behind bars, like the earned living unit at Stillwater Correctional Facility: Men sleeping safely in their own cells; “high” wages ($1.50 an hour); environmental beautification; couches and exercise equipment in common areas. These were common safety creating practices in the 1980s, and should be again. 

But why is Gov. Tim Walz spending millions on a temporary incentive in a facility that’s scheduled to close in 2029 while blocking the most important safety incentive on the books — earned release? 

In 2023, the Minnesota Rehabilitation and Reinvestment Act was signed by Walz, incentivizing safety through rehabilitation, with Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell leading the charge. Everyone in prison — not serving a life sentence — would now have an opportunity to earn up to 17% off their sentence, and 11% off supervision for completing programming and good behavior. Half the resulting savings to taxpayers were to be reinvested in victim services, the rest to rehabilitation, creating a feedback loop of safer prisons, communities and more supported victims. 

The DOC promised 18-24 months to implement. 

Now, 30 months later, the Walz administration appears to be undermining its own law. 

The Department of Corrections’ new implementation timeline means basically no releases until May of 2027 — yet every day families of the estimated 2,800 people potentially eligible for release may be losing time with their loved ones they can never get back. Failure to follow the law also stops the administration from their own policy goal of closing Stillwater early, wasting millions that could be used to create better conditions everywhere. 

This lack of leadership has consequences. Guards were stabbed and a man murdered in Rush City because the maximum security prison is unnecessarily overcrowded and double bunked, and people are losing the hope gained when the MRRA passed. 

Toxic prison environments are killing us, with both prison guards and long-term incarcerated people dying decades earlier than average. And this environment also contributes to recidivism — nearly 80% of DOC “graduates” are projected to be arrested within five years of release. 

Why is Walz signing laws he’s not willing to implement? 

Data suggests incentive-based leave programs like the MRRA can dramatically reduce recidivism: In Oregon, just 10% who earned significant incentive returned, compared to 30% who didn’t, per Crime Victims United, while return rates were 55% lower under the federal First Step Act.

The facts show that rehabilitation is not a luxury, it is a basic precondition for safety, both for people inside prisons and the broader community. 

Nor does stalling create safety. Everyone eligible for MRRA will be released regardless of rehabilitation. So while some may jeer whenever someone let out early is returned to prison, we know the individuals in question will be released one way or another. 

The question is not whether some will come back, but, rather, how do we get the most safety with our tax dollars? 

By incentivizing rehabilitation through earned early release, the MRRA increases safety for everyone who lives and works in prison, as well as for the community once people are released. Savings become investments in victims and further rehabilitation. A fully utilized MRRA would be a huge step towards making safety the rule – not the exception.

But it won’t if this administration fails to follow the law they signed.  

A recent Minnesota court case found unconstitutional the gradual rollout of a new child welfare law to just 30% of those eligible, because it failed to provide equal protection to the 100% it should support. The current MRRA rollout is denying nearly everyone eligible.  

As we write, three men in Faribault are suing on the same grounds. Though currently without legal representation, they recognize that every day that slips away is time stolen from children, parents, friends — time they will never get back, even if the MRRA is eventually implemented. 

This is playing politics with people’s lives. And a governor who signs legislation but doesn’t implement it is, in effect, a governor in name only.

Governor: As you sit down with your own family in the coming months, we beg you to consider if anything can substitute for the living presence of loved ones in the sacred moments of our lives. 

Nor should we erase the fact that Schnell, the DOC commissioner, successfully intervened to lighten the prison sentence of his ex-wife, following her conviction for premeditated attempted murder. When it came to his family he understood that time is all we have. Under the MRRA law, all Minnesotans should have access to earn a fraction of what the commissioner’s own family has already received. 

We – incarcerated Minnesotans, their loved ones, and all who want safer communities – call on Schnell, Walz and the Legislature to do right by the 27,000 people under the DOC’s control.

Implement the safety law you championed, passed and signed.

If reform is to mean anything, it must be measured not by legislation passed or photo ops at facilities slated to close, but by lives changed. Anything less is political theater.