North Dakota's 'Truth-in-Sentencing' Bill Could Cost More Than $250 Million

The bill would also create mandatory minimum jail sentences for fleeing the police.

A bill to reduce opportunities for early release and work programs for North Dakota inmates is advancing through the state legislature, but the steep price tag has pitted the prison system against the bill's biggest supporter—the state attorney general.

Senate Bill 2128 would require violent offenders in North Dakota to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences in prison—a so-called "truth-in-sentencing" provision—before they could be eligible for release to a halfway house or other transitional program. It would also create mandatory sentences of 14 to 30 days for those convicted of resisting arrest, assaulting law enforcement officers, and felony fleeing.

The bill is currently awaiting a vote at the state Senate Appropriations Committee before moving to the Senate floor.

Republican North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley, the bill's primary advocate, says it would stop dangerous, repeat offenders from being released back into the public after serving only a fraction of their sentence. 

"What we've identified is there is a complete lack of truth in sentencing in North Dakota," Wrigley told Minot Daily News earlier this month. "There's no transparency. There's no accountability, and to top it off, you won't be surprised, there are no results. There are no results that would ever support a system that is systematically letting violent criminals out the side door in many cases well before they're paroled, and in every case, well before they've served their sentence."

However, the legislation has alarmed not only criminal justice advocates and civil liberties groups, but the North Dakota prison system, which estimates it will drastically increase costs while eliminating rehabilitative programs.

The North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DOCR) released a fiscal note estimating that the bill will increase incarceration costs by $269 million through 2029, according to the Grand Forks Herald.

DOCR Director Colby Braun told the Grand Forks Herald that access to rehabilitative programming, work release, and in-house work at prisons would be considerably reduced for both violent and non-violent inmates, possibly leading to the elimination of some transitional housing facilities entirely:

"The bill completely changes all the work that has happened over the decades," Braun said. "This bill takes all those opportunities away from most people."

Wrigley contends that the DOCR is intentionally overstating the costs and effects to sink his bill.

Criminal justice advocates say reducing opportunities for sentence reductions also destroys incentives for inmates to participate in rehabilitative and educational programs.

"The bill reduces incentives for rehabilitation in prison," says Kevin Ring, the vice president of criminal justice advocacy at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic advocacy group. "The best research—and common sense—suggests we should do the opposite. Prisons function better and offenders succeed more often when they are given incentives to improve themselves while they are incarcerated."

Many states began passing truth-in-sentencing laws in the 1990s, spurred by federal grants for prison construction if they did so, as well as outrage over offenders being released early from long sentences. However, those laws, combined with long mandatory minimum sentences, tend to ultimately saddle states with large, aging, and very expensive prison populations.

During the bipartisan criminal justice reforms of the 2010s, some states reduced their truth-in-sentencing requirements, created additional reductions for good behavior or completing programs, and added "second-look" or "safety valve" provisions that allow judges to reduce sentences in some circumstances.

However, in recent years some states have gone the other way. Arkansas, Colorado, and Louisiana have all enacted new truth-in-sentencing provisions.

The new mandatory minimum sentences in the North Dakota bill also drew criticism. Resisting arrest, for example, is a notoriously abused charge that police use to retaliate against people who annoy them.

"Mandatory minimums never allow for context, and this bill suffers from the same flaw," Ring says. "A nervous 18-year-old who flees the campus keg party when the cops arrive is subject to the same mandatory jail sentence as the dangerous, armed subject that I assume the drafters had in mind. This is dumb on the best of days, but it is dangerous when county jails are already dangerously understaffed."