How do we create safety in Minnesota’s prisons if people don’t have hope to come home alive? How do we create cultures of rehabilitation without hope? 

While Minnesota officially ended the death penalty in 1911, yet 167 people are currently sentenced to die in our prisons with a life without parole sentence. Over 600 lifers and hundreds of elderly, disabled, and chronically ill prisoners sit without a clear path home, costing taxpayers $60,000 per person each year, more if sick or disabled. 

These populations have extremely low rates of committing new crimes, roughly 1%, and are often the elders and peacemakers we need back home. Yet lifers are excluded from accessing and earning good time from rehabilitation programs in prison, many of which they have created. 

The Hope Act restores that hope giving all incarcerated people a reason to work for rehabilitation: ending life without parole, including lifers in the new earned time law, and creating an independent medical release board for those who have a grave medical illness and are no threat to the public. It also increases victim say over what people have to do to come home, while reducing parole to a public safety decision. 

MN Legislature, give hope to our families, increase safety, and save money: pass the Hope Act in 2025.