Yvette Higgins

Report for Minnesota

As the Legislature assembles a new two-year budget for public safety needs, some lawmakers are concerned that crime victims and incarcerated people will not get the help they need due to limited funding. 

The $3.66 billion budget bill that the House passed on April 25 increases state spending for the next two years by $50 million for public safety and $30 million for courts.  But state agency officials and even the bill’s authors say the increase isn’t enough to maintain some current services.

Rep. Kelly Moller, DFL-Shoreview, and Rep. Paul Novotny, R-Elk River, co-chairs of the House Public Safety Committee, said they did their best to allocate money with a limited budget. 

“Both sides of the aisle, I feel, want to make sure that the people coming out of prisons— that we both acknowledge will be coming out— are in a position that they can be productive members of society,” Novotny said at the Ways and Means Committee meeting on April 22. 

Moller said in an interview her priority in the bill was funding victim services centers, which include domestic violence centers, sexual assault advocates, child abuse centers, and general crime advocates. 

“We’re all less safe if we don’t have these kinds of services for victims and survivors of crime,” Moller said. 

The bill allocates $16 million to these centers, while also creating supplemental funds that will come in part from increased marriage license fees and penalties from crime convictions. 

Currently, victim services centers get federal funding from fines and penalties from federal crime convictions, according to the Office of Victims of Crime. The fund balance fell from $13 billion in 2017 to $4.3 billion in 2025. 

The Department of Justice also cut federal grants that funded victim services centers on April 22. 

Moller said the $16 million in the bill will help, but she said the Department of Public Safety needed about $50 million to fund victim services centers before the Trump administration cut funding further. 

“I just can’t emphasize enough that the federal cuts are going to be devastating to these programs,” Moller said.

The co-chairs said the limited budget will not give the Department of Corrections (DOC) enough money to hire correctional officers, fund rehabilitation programming for incarcerated people and ensure the safety of prisoners. The bill gave the DOC $17 million for the next two years. 

Shannon Loehrke, the DOC’s director of communications, said in an email if the DOC does not have adequate funding, inmates will not get the rehabilitation they need and will be more likely to commit crimes again. Without funding to hire more staff, she said, inmates have much more idle time, which causes increased violence and misconduct among inmates, according to DOC research. 

Over the past decade, the DOC has implemented initiatives to increase staffing and expand access to rehabilitative programming, Loehrke said. 

“These efforts are a core part of our mission to transform lives for a safer Minnesota,” Loehrke said. “However, these initiatives are only sustainable with adequate funding.”

Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, said some of the money that goes toward prisoner phone calls and cable TV should instead be allocated toward hiring correctional officers. Currently, prisons get $3 million a year for phone calls between incarcerated people and their family members, and $1 million is for cable TV, according to Novotny. 

Moller said in an interview allowing prisoners to call their loved ones is not just a Democratic idea. 

“Making sure people have those family connections really helps with rehabilitation,” Moller said. 

Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news in all areas of the state.