What Ending Cash Bail Would Really Cost Minnesota Taxpayers

Bail costs Minnesota taxpayers nothing today. Replace it with government supervision, and the bill lands squarely on the public.

Under secured bail, the private surety bears the cost and risk of bringing a defendant back to court. Not the taxpayer. Eliminate it, and those functions don’t vanish. They land in a government-run system funded by state and county tax dollars.

The estimate: $275–$500 million a year, and more

The Association estimates that shifting these functions under government supervision would cost the state and counties between $275 million and $500 million per year. That covers staffing, risk-assessment software and subscriptions, drug testing, electronic monitoring, case processing, and the extra load on law enforcement when someone skips court and there’s no bail agent to go get them. Add the full downstream weight on courts, probation, and police, and the true cost could top $750 million a year.

For perspective: Minnesota already appropriates roughly $143 million a year just for community supervision services under the statutory funding formula. That money supervises people who have already been convicted. A pretrial supervision system would layer an entirely new population on top of it. And Minnesota’s track record with supervision isn’t cheap when it fails, either. More than 60 percent of prison admissions in this state come from supervision failures, costing Minnesota over $77 million a year.

Where does the number come from

Nobody pulled this out of the air. It’s built on Minnesota’s own community-supervision funding formula, on adopted county budgets from around the state, and on what the same reform has cost elsewhere.

New Jersey found out the hard way. When it eliminated money bail in 2017, the state had to build a pretrial services bureaucracy from scratch. Within the first year, the pretrial services program had already received about $67 million and needed another $35 million for electronic monitoring, drug testing, and treatment services, plus more than $2 million for a new information technology system, plus additional employees to run risk assessments and monitor defendants. The program was funded by court filing fees, and the acting administrative director of the New Jersey courts warned it would run out of money by the end of 2020. County governments raised concerns about the cost of additional police and court personnel, and whether they could break even without raising property taxes. That’s what “free” pretrial reform looks like on the ground.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

•    Minn. Stat. § 401.10 (Funding Community Supervision) — the state funding formula. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/401.10

•    Minnesota Legislature, S.F. 3196 (2025) — $143.4 million annual appropriation for community supervision services. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/94/2025/0/SF/3196/versions/0/pdf/

•    Minnesota DOC — How Community Supervision Is Delivered. https://mn.gov/doc/community-supervision/community-supervision/how-delivered/

•    CSG Justice Center (2023) — Minnesota’s $43.6M/yr supervision funding increase. https://csgjusticecenter.org/2023/06/27/explainer-minnesotas-justice-reinvestment-legislation-results-in-43-6-million-annual-increase-in-community-supervision-system/

•    CSG Justice Center — Justice Reinvestment Initiative in Minnesota (supervision failures account for 60%+ of prison admissions, costing the state $77M+ annually). https://csgjusticecenter.org/publications/justice-reinvestment-initiative-in-minnesota-improving-supervision-investments-and-outcomes/

•    New Jersey Attorney General — Executive Order 211 Criminal Justice Reform Study (2016), pre-implementation cost evaluation. https://nj.gov/oag/library/Executive-Order-211--FINAL-REPORT--11.30.16.pdf

•    New Jersey Courts — Criminal Justice Reform Information Center (annual reports to the Legislature, including pretrial services funding shortfall warnings). https://www.njcourts.gov/public/concerns/criminal-justice-reform

•    N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation & Public Policy — Bail Reform in New York: Lessons from New Jersey (county cost concerns and personnel burdens). https://nyujlpp.org/quorum/isaacman-new-york-bail-reform-lessons-new-jersey/

•    Minnesota Legislative Reference Library — Community Supervision Funding Formula Report (2025). https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2025/mandated/250074.pdf