Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Corrections Minnesota's rising prison population has already exceeded capacity.

In 2013, something remarkable happened in New Jersey. After reforming its drug policies and rethinking its practice of throwing ex-cons back into state correctional facilities for parole violations, the state saw its prison population drop to 19,528, the lowest point in two decades, and a 28 percent decline from its late '90s peak. That same year, in stark contrast, Minnesota's prison population hit one of the highest levels in its history. Since 2000, a meth boom, harsher penalties for DWIs and other factors have made the state’s prison population jump from 6,200 to more than 9,450 as of January 2013, according to Department of Corrections data. And though Minnesota still has one of the smallest prison populations​ in the country, second only to Maine, the rate of incarceration — the number of inmates per 100,000 residents — went up 42 percent. At the same time, the index crime rate plummeted 27 percent statewide to the lowest point since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. Index crime includes violent and property crimes, such as robbery, aggravated assault and burglary.



Minnesota’s crime rate vs. Minnesota’s incarceration rate

Even as the rate of major crimes committed in Minnesota has declined, the rate at which the state puts people in prison has risen.

Sources: Crime rate: Uniform Crime Reports; Incarceration rate: Minnesota Department of Corrections

The juxtaposition of these two statistics bucks national trends, according to a recent study by The Brennan Center for Justice. Though crime fell across the country, imprisonment rates dropped in 15 states, while another 23 saw increases of less than 20 percent. The growth in Minnesota's prison population represents the second sharpest rise in the country. For taxpayers, it’s an expensive problem. It costs more than $30,000 in Minnesota to house one inmate per year, according to the Department of Corrections. And the price could soon go up. As a consequence of the unprecedented growth in its prison population, Minnesota is running out of places to put its inmates. In order to manage overcrowding, the prison system wants to expand its Rush City facility to accommodate 500 more beds. That means the Department of Corrections will ask legislators for $85 million in next year’s bonding bill to fund the project. One way or another, lawmakers are going to have to address Minnesota’s rising prison population, says Mark Osler, University of St. Thomas law school professor and retired assistant U.S. Attorney. “If nobody pays attention to it, and they just keep overcrowding the prisons, eventually there will be a federal lawsuit,” says Osler. “Then people will start to pay attention, and then the Legislature will start to do its job.” A hardened philosophy Historically, Minnesota’s corrections system has been known for two things: a low prisoner population and a progressive philosophy toward punishing criminals — a notion that offenders can be rehabilitated. In the 1980s and ‘90s, when states like California were deluging their prisons through tough-on-crime sentencing policies, such as controversial three-strikes-you're-out laws, Minnesota stayed the course. As a 1999 report by former corrections commissioner Orville B. Pung would note, even as other states moved to more punitive-minded sentencing practices, Minnesota had “never really deviated from its early hope that the operation of prisons would result in a safer society by making prisoners better people.” The state was among the first to adopt sentencing guidelines, a roadmap to help judges find the appropriate punishment for offenders. It also instituted a commission tasked with developing the guidelines and studying felony sentencing data to make sure Minnesota’s prisoner population didn’t exceed capacity and lead to overcrowding. In 1981, around the time those guidelines went into effect, state prisons housed a mere 1,892 people. By the end of the decade, the population had grown to slightly more than 3,000, still far below the national average. By 2000, however, Minnesota’s incarcerated population almost doubled from the decade prior. As of January 2015, it’s lingering at about 9,950. Most of that growth took place in the first five years of the millennium: In that time, the number of prisoners per 100,000 Minnesotans jumped from 124 to 166, or 34 percent. The rate peaked in 2009, at 184, and declined slightly the next two years before gradually growing again in 2013. In comparison, California and New York, two of the country’s largest corrections systems, have seen some of the most significant prisoner declines in the United States. Following a federal court order to ease massive overcrowding, California cut its incarceration rate by 23 percent from 2009 to 2013. New York reduced its rate by about 27 percent from 2000 to 2013. Some wonder if the enhanced penalties and other new laws driving the incarceration rate signal a change of values from the hope described by Pung. “I’m not seeing anywhere near the same reform spirit that we had 30 to 40 years ago,” says David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University. “I think we’re making it easier for people to get in prison.”



Minnesota an outlier

When the Brennan Center for Justice compared changes in property and violent crime rates to incarceration rates in all 50 states from 2000 to 2013, Minnesota stood out for its big jump. (Only one state was worse: West Virginia's increase was too high to fit in the charts below.)