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For a Fairer Justice System, These Are the Bills the Justice For All Coalition is Advocating For in 2026

  • Writer: MN Justice Research Center
    MN Justice Research Center
  • 8 minutes ago
  • 2 min read

The Justice for All Coalition (JFA) is made up of several organizations, including the Minnesota Justice Research Center, with the goal of meaningful legal system transformations that protect public safety while addressing and transforming those parts of the system that do more harm than good.


Ahead of each legislative session, members submit proposals, which are voted on to be part of the coalition’s slate of policy priorities. From 29 proposals, 11 were selected for the 2026 Justice For All advocacy slate, which the Steering Committee sorted into three themes. 


Theme 1: People dealing with difficulties and traumas should still be able to participate fully in society.


  1. Survivor's Justice Act: People who have experienced trauma deserve to have flexibility in sentencing for crimes connected to that trauma.

  2. Truancy Law Modifications: Youth who have fallen, or been pushed, out of the school system deserve as many on-ramps back to education as we can give them.

  3. Remove Post-Conviction Review Timelines: No innocent incarcerated person should be time-limited in their claim of innocence.

  4. Reasonable Suspicion Drug Testing: Justice-impacted people with histories of addiction and substance use should be treated with dignity and tested only if there is a basis for testing, not randomly. Random testing does not show an improvement in outcomes.


Theme 2: When crime is alleged, people deserve fair and transparent investigatory procedures that respect their constitutional rights.


    1. Youth Interrogations Protections: Children need to be fully informed of their rights and be empowered to enforce those rights.

    2. Personnel Data/Brady-Giglio Compliance: All defendants deserve access to all relevant evidence that could help their case/

    3. Disclosure of Police AI Use: All defendants deserve to know what tools were used to investigate them, and if those tools are reliable and unbiased.

  1. Pretrial Data: Our state needs to know the scope and nature of our pretrial detention problem.


Theme 3: A safer Minnesota is built by addressing poverty and eliminating penalties that disproportionally impact the poor.

  1. End Slavery in Minnesota Prisons: All labor must be compensated at a fair rate, whether that labor is incarcerated or not.

  2. Ability to Pay Determinations: Justice-impacted people without the ability to pay fines and fees deserve a standardized and reasonable set of guidelines for determining their ability to pay those fines and fees.

  3. Drug Paraphernalia Legalization: Loopholes in the drug paraphernalia law from a few years ago are disproportionally putting poor Minnesotans in jail, and must be closed.


Do these issues matter to you? Join the community-led advocacy effort to move these bills at the Capitol. Register now for the Justice For All Coalition’s Day on the Hill on April 15, 2026, to pack the rotunda and make your justice priorities heard.




Learn more about the JFA Coalition at justiceforallmn.org.


Fatima Moore from Firefly Advocacy (fatima@fireflyadvocacy.com) will lead the JFA’s lobbying efforts at the Capitol.

 
 
 
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