Toward Safety, Liberty, and Equity:

A Community-Centered Framework for Redesigning Minnesota’s Pretrial System

October 2023 - February 2025

The final report is here.

Conversations about the effectiveness and fairness of a cash bail system - a money-based system of detention and release pretrial - have taken place across the country in the past several years, and many states have made significant changes to their pretrial systems.

In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature tasked the MNJRC with studying Minnesota’s pretrial system and identifying ways it could be improved or transformed. In 2025, we published the final report.

In this video, MNJRC leads explain the six evidence-based recommendations made in our pretrial report.

For the last year, the MNJRC team has studied how Minnesota’s criminal legal system operates during the period between arrest or citation for a criminal offense and the resolution of that case. We have conducted legal research; interviewed attorneys, judges, and probation agents; and talked with over 200 community members across the state to hear about their experiences. Core themes emerged in our conversations with community members, including accountability.

Minnesotans do not, for the most part, feel like the legal system is accountable to them or their loved ones, especially during the period of time when a person is considered legally innocent.

By incorporating the feedback of community members into our recommendations, the MNJRC ensures that Minnesota’s criminal legal system is more accountable to the needs and wishes of the people it serves.

Get an inside look at MNJRC's

community-centered approach to research.

We have also studied best practices for pretrial justice across the country. That work included site visits to states that have changed their pretrial systems, like New Jersey and Illinois, alongside cities and counties that have rethought how to provide support during the pretrial period, like New York City and Cass County, Indiana.

We met with attorneys and judges in those places, observed court hearings, and talked with community advocates.

Finally, our research team has reviewed the best research literature available to identify evidence-based practices and conducted legal research to identify how, if at all, Minnesota’s legal system is failing to uphold the state and federal constitutions.

We quickly discovered that we needed better and more pretrial data to meaningfully understand and transform our pretrial system.

So in February 2024, we published a preliminary report to outline this gap for the legislature.

Out of this finding came a pretrial data transparency bill that is back on the legislative table in 2025. Learn more about the proposal here.

Read the 2024 report

What's Next + Get Involved

Our report including six evidence-based policy recommendations has been submitted to the Minnesota State Legislature, with the potential to radically transform the way that justice is done in this state.

As we roll out our findings to the community, we're interested in hearing from you! Do you want to be involved in moving this work from a transformative vision to policy action? In the early spring we'll be connecting with community members to build the necessary momentum to enact the critical legislative change. Subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about community report-back events or reach out to our research team to learn more.

You can also support this project by donating to the Minnesota Justice Research Center. Your contributions make a difference in how we're able to do our work.

Give to MNJRC