Learn More About Pretrial Justice
Learn how the current pretrial system impacts our communities — and how Minnesotans are working together to transform it.
The Current Pretrial System Harms Minnesotans.
On any given day, about 3,000 people are jailed in Minnesota without a conviction. Greater Minnesota has the highest rates of pretrial detention, and Black and Indigenous Minnesotans are vastly overrepresented in pretrial populations across the state.
Not only does pretrial detention disproportionately harm Minnesotans who are already vulnerable, it doesn’t keep our families or communities safe. People jailed pretrial have worse case outcomes and face collateral consequences like job loss, housing loss, and loss of family connections – all losses that harm individuals and make communities less safe.
We can do better. Find out what we’re doing to transform Minnesota’s pretrial system.
2,941
Greater Minnesota
1,500 out of 100,000
16 Days
350%
The “pretrial system” encompasses everything that happens between arrest or citation and the resolution of a person’s case. Part of our current pretrial system is a practice called “cash bail.”
Most people equate “bail” with money – an amount of money that a defendant must pay in order to be released before their trial. But legally and historically, bail is a process of release.
Minnesota’s state constitution says that all people must be “bailable” before trial. That means if someone is charged with a crime, they cannot be detained before trial without access to release.
People charged with low-level crimes are sometimes released with the promise to return for trial. But many defendants are only released pretrial if they meet certain conditions, which are supposedly intended to return people to court and keep them law-abiding during release.
In Minnesota, one of these conditions is the payment of a monetary amount set by a judge. If a defendant can afford that amount, they go free. But if they can’t afford their bail amount, they’re jailed before trial. We call this practice “cash bail.”
The problem is that the use of cash bail allows judges to circumvent Minnesotans’ constitutional right to pretrial release by setting bail amounts the vast majority of us could not afford.
Even worse, by using money as a condition of release, courts extend fundamental rights to the wealthy that they don’t extend to people with less money – even though all defendants, regardless of their wealth, are presumed innocent unless proven guilty and should, under the state constitution, have equal access to pretrial release.
Minnesota’s use of cash bail to determine pretrial release harms everyone accused of a crime, regardless of their race, wealth, or where they live.
A recent report by the Minnesota Justice Research Center shows that from 2017–2023, an average of 5,571 people were detained in Minnesota jails on any given day. Of that population, an average of 2,941 people were held pretrial. That means, on any given day, over 56% of the jail population in the state consists of people held pretrial.
It hasn’t always been this way. In fact, the practice of pretrial detention has grown exponentially. In Minnesota alone, the total jail population increased by over 350% between 1970 and 2015. This growth is mainly due to a dramatic expansion in the number of people held pretrial.
But while the current pretrial system harms all of us, some communities are more subject to these harms than others.
Across the state, wide racial disparities exist in pretrial detention. Indigenous men in Minnesota are jailed at a rate of 1,500 for every 100,000 residents, and Black Minnesotans are also vastly overrepresented in the pretrial population.
Pretrial detention is a statewide issue. People living in rural Minnesota have the highest rates of pretrial jailing, wider racial disparities, and longer average periods of pretrial incarceration than people living in metro areas.
When people can’t afford their bail, every day they sit in jail compounds the harm of bail. When people are offered the chance to take a plea, with that being their only way out of jail, they are under a tremendous amount of stress and pressure. During the MNJRC study, they heard from participants time and time again about the pressure to just take a plea deal and get out of jail.
Community members also talked about taking plea deals out of desperation to end their detention, forgoing the opportunity to prove their innocence. “There’s no real choice,” one participant said. They noted that fighting cases from jail is extremely difficult. Some community members felt that the state intentionally leverages pretrial detention to induce people to plead guilty. This perception undercuts community trust in Minnesota’s legal system.
Research from as far back as the 1950s shows that those who are detained pretrial suffer worse case outcomes. Accused individuals who remain in jail before trial tend to get convicted at higher rates, receive longer prison sentences, and fare worse in plea-bargaining processes than similarly situated defendants released pretrial. Because many people are detained pretrial due to their inability to afford monetary bail, the current system creates two tiers of justice: one for those with money and another for those without.
Unfortunately, decades of propaganda about the pretrial system have convinced many Minnesotans of several false assumptions.
Pretrial detention can prevent criminal activity in the short-term by incapacitating people accused of crimes. But pretrial detention increases the likelihood that a person will be charged with a new offense in the future. Studies find that the longer an individual stays in jail pretrial, the higher the likelihood that they will recidivate within 24 months. Researchers suggest that these longer-term increases in criminal activity occur because pretrial detention disrupts or severs interpersonal relationships and community ties and results in decreased employment over time. Researchers conclude that the net effect of pretrial detention is to jeopardize community safety in the long term.
Fortunately, pretrial crime is rare. New Jersey, which virtually eliminated its use of monetary bail in 2017, found that “[n]early all defendants released successfully complete their pretrial period without acquiring a new charge, with the rate of rearrest for very serious crimes at less than 1% annually” from 2018–2023. Studies of Washington, D.C., and New York City similarly found that the vast majority of released defendants remained arrest-free during the pretrial period.
Of course, the question of community safety is not limited to crime and arrest rates. The safety of Minnesota communities is also impacted by factors such as access to employment, housing, health care, and other economic resources. Research shows that access to these resources increases community safety and well-being over the short and long term. And because pretrial detention reduces access to employment, housing, and health care, pretrial detention decreases public safety.
The alternative is a complete overhaul that has many components. The coalition recommends that the following changes are made:
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