ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Sheriffs Association may sue the state prison agency over an order for the Hennepin County jail to reduce. overcrowding immediately. James Stuart, executive director, said the state Department of Corrections was singling out the Hennepin jail unfairly. Many jails in the state are short-handed, he said: “More than one jail has been caught up in this situation and when the elected sheriffs have attempted to reach out and have this dialogue, the DOC has been unresponsive.” The order is for Hennepin County to find other places to incarcerate a third of its inmates– from 900 now to 600. In threatening a lawsuit against the state agency, Stuart noted that Sheriff Dawanna Witt, who runs the Hennepin County jail, already was in the process of relocating 200 inmates.

Overbooked jails

Jail overcrowding became a major public issue this week when Hennepin County was ordered to pay out $3.4 million because of a wrongful death in 2022. It suddenly was repotted widely that seven inmates had died at the jail in the past two years. Stuart: said the reporting was overstated: “Five of those seven deaths were of natural causes.”