Bail Reform Work Group

• JusticePoint
• Minnesota Board of Public Defense
• Ramsey County Community Corrections
• Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office
• Ramsey County Attorney’s Office
• Saint Paul City Attorney’s Office
• Saint Paul Police Department

Community-based organizations

• Breaking Free
• Minnesota Freedom Fund
• Neighborhood Justice Center
• Research in Action
• We Resolve 

Community members

Community members include retired system stakeholders, justice-involved people and other community members.

The BRWG is studying opportunities to improve how people are released after they are booked into jail. Based on the authority of the prosecuting attorney, releasing people based on risk to not appear or public safety risk before charging can reduce unnecessary pretrial detention. 

Why this matters

Research shows that pretrial detention for any amount of time is associated with an increased likelihood of rearrest. It also causes harm to people’s lives when they are detained before they’ve been found guilty or innocent of a crime. When detained, they can’t work, attend school, fulfill caretaking responsibilities, or participate actively in their own defense.

The BRWG is studying current policies and practices of how people with lower-level charges are currently released at the Ramsey County Detention Center (jail). As part of this analysis, the Public Safety Assessment, a pretrial assessment tool, is being validated on local data. Validation uses historical data to test how a pretrial assessment tool predicts pretrial outcomes - meaning court appearances and no new arrests - including how it predicts for race and gender. An assessment may be one improvement the BRWG implements to bring more information to release decision-making.

The BRWG prioritizes collaboration between community members and system stakeholders to jointly create, improve, implement and evaluate policies, practices, and service delivery in a way that centers the experience of those who will use the services or be impacted by the particular system(s) at issue. Central to this work are participation, inclusion, collaboration, and a broad representation from communities across Ramsey County, including those who have been impacted by the pretrial justice process. We use the guiding principles of sharing power, prioritizing relationships, building capacity, and using participatory means.  

Town halls

After two years of working on the Ramsey County Bail Reform project, it was important to those involved to begin the process of inviting justice-impacted community members to the table in order to share their expertise. To begin this process, Research in Action hosted two Town Halls in February 2022 in partnership with the Ramsey County Bail Reform Working Group. These Town Halls served a number of purposes in informing the community about the BRWG’s work thus far, to hear directly from justice-impacted individuals about this process and their pretrial experiences, and to invite them to join the BRWG in the co-design process going forward.

Town Hall presentation (PDF)

Leaders from Ramsey County and local justice reform organizations first met in May 2019, motivated to collaborate and achieve a shared vision of pretrial justice for our community. The following summer and fall, these leaders held learning conversations that resulted in the Ramsey County Bail Reform Working Group (BRWG).

In 2020, the county became a Research-Action Site with Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR) through an application backed by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, the Ramsey County Attorney's Office, and the Ramsey County Manager's Office. As a Research-Action Site, BRWG members receive intensive technical assistance and data support to study their current system, identify opportunities for improvement and implement legal, evidence-based policies and practices informed by local data and designed to improve pretrial outcomes and enhance community safety and wellbeing.

The BRWG is also partnering with Research In Action to support meaningful community engagement. RIA is developing a community action plan and organizing Town Halls.

The BRWG is studying research-informed policies and practices, analyzing local data, studying our system to identify opportunities for effective improvements to our pretrial system and promoting best practices that ensure fair and equitable administration of constitutional protections while eliminating the harm caused to communities of color.