Without a change in course, Minnesota will need to build a new prison for 1,000 inmates every other year from now until 2030, and the number of black people arrested will nearly double by 2030, says a nonprofit group’s forecast reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The predictions are part of a call to action being issued today by the Council on Crime and Justice, as the group celebrates its 50th anniversary. The council lays out five corrective actions that the state can take in a framework titled, “Justice, Where Art Thou?” The exhaustive report details ominous signs for the state’s justice system, including a burgeoning prison population and an increasing gap between the state’s aging affluent white population and its growing, poor minority population.
The report describes a “bleak picture” of arrest and incarceration in 2030 without corrective action: A 25 percent increase in the total number of arrests from 2006. The number of people imprisoned is expected to double to more than 20,000 and to be disproportionately minority. Now, blacks make up 32 percent of the prison population and only 4 percent of the general population.