North Dakota
North Dakota bill requiring inmates to serve 85% of prison time draws heated, lengthy debate
BISMARCK — A North Dakota bill that would ensure defendants serve at least 85% of their sentences drew hours of impassioned testimony and debate over whether it would deter crime and promote public safety or simply crowd prisons at a high cost.
Over the course of several hours, the North Dakota Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony Tuesday, Jan. 21, and Wednesday for and against
Senate Bill 2128.
Attorney General Drew Wrigley
proposed the legislation,
which would require offenders to serve 85% of their sentence before they qualify for release, also known as “truth in sentencing.”
It also would ensure sentences for resisting arrest, simple assault on a peace officer and fleeing are served on top of other crimes. The minimum sentence for resisting arrest would be 14 days in jail, while assault and fleeing would get at least 30 days.
Chris Flynn / The Forum
The bill is Wrigley’s
second attempt in as many legislative sessions
to set minimum sentences. Language has been cut back from the bill in 2023, which went through a whirlwind of changes before its ultimate defeat.
The main difference is the 85% rule, which Wrigley said would create across-the-board reform.
“Senate Bill 2128 offers you the opportunity to right this wrong, which has evolved over years, and to bring truth to sentencing transparency,” he said.
Testimony got lengthy and heated, mostly on Wednesday when opponents of the bill spoke. Studies suggest minimum and truth in sentencing laws do little to reduce crime.
“It’s just a failed policy,” said Travis Finck, executive director for the North Dakota Commission on Legal Counsel for Indigents.
It’s unclear how much the bill will cost, as amendments are expected to reduce initial estimates.
The bill would eliminate parole eligibility for every North Dakota prisoner, said North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Colby Braun. Only those who do not get early release for good behavior and exceed 85% would qualify, he said.
“It ignores research and places the fiscal burden on taxpayers by focusing solely on prison capacity while eliminating reentry opportunities for most adults in custody,” Braun said.
Time not served behind bars
Crime has increased over the years, Wrigley said in arguing that his bill would hold those who confront law enforcement accountable. Fleeing, resisting and assault on officers often is served concurrently with other offenses, he said.
“It is a freebie, and it is a slap in the face to every man and woman who wears a uniform in this state that has watched misconduct toward them increase over the last decade or more,” Wrigley said. “All our legislation asks is for that to not be a freebie.”
The North Dakota Chiefs of Police Association and North Dakota Peace Officers Association supported the bill.
Bismarck Police Deputy Chief Jason Stugelmeyer said he has noticed a dramatic increase in officer assaults since 2020. He said the streets are more violent than when he started policing 24 years ago because people are not afraid to confront officers.
Darren Gibbins / The Bismarck Tribune
“Thank God, it’s not serious most of the time, but it’s crazy,” he said. “I sometimes hear we can’t arrest our way out of it, and maybe some of that is true, but we need a deterrent.”
Fleeing law enforcement also has increased significantly, Stugelmeyer said.
Finck noted Bismarck has a limited chase policy. Defendants know if they flee at a high rate of speed, police will terminate the chase in some instances, he said.
That suggests suspects flee because they think they will not get caught, not because they know they will not be punished.
The public thinks there is “truth in sentencing,” but defendants are serving a fraction of their punishments behind bars, Wrigley said.
“There is precious little predictability,” he said. “Forget about truth in sentencing.”
Truth in sentencing is needed to ensure punishments are being served, Assistant Burleigh County State’s Attorney Dennis Ingold said. Among several examples, he noted that a defendant he prosecuted got a two-year sentence for bringing drugs from Michigan to North Dakota.
The defendant only served 55 days behind bars, Ingold said. That included 20 days in jail the defendant served while awaiting sentencing, the prosecutor said. The defendant spent 35 days in prison before being moved to a halfway house, Ingold noted.
Brad Nygaard / The Bismarck Tribune
“If you look at true days served, that’s 7.5%,” Ingold said.
The DOCR would count the amount of time served as 50%, since he served six months in the halfway house plus early release time for good behavior, Ingold said.
“I know the argument is going to be that these are outliers, but these are real cases,” he said.
Data from the DOCR suggests the average time an inmate serves at one of its facilities is 50%, but that includes prison and transitional centers.
Early releases happen because North Dakota does not have a minimum standard for how much time must be spent behind bars, Ingold said.
“From a prosecutor’s perspective, we are using up a lot of resources prosecuting people who are still subject to DOCR sentences at the time that we encounter them,” he said.
Transitional facilities are used to integrate inmates back into society before fully being released from custody. People can leave for several hours, but they have to come back to custody, Finck said.
Inmates at the Bismarck Transition Center have to have a job, Administrator Kevin Arthaud said. About 100 people at the facility are inmates, while roughly 20 are on parole, he said.
“We are trying to make people ready for release,” he said.
There is structure at the facility with few walk-aways, or escapes, Arthaud said. SB 2128 would eliminate opportunities for inmates to use the center to prepare for society, he said. That means the facility likely would shut down, and local businesses who employ center inmates would lose those workers, he said.
Minimum mandatory sentencing laws do not reduce crime or recidivism, said Andrew Myer, a criminal justice professor at the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute.
“For deterrence to work, we need three things to happen,” he said. “We need certainty, which means that the person will be arrested or caught for their crimes, we need celerity, that the punishment will happen quickly, and we need severity, that the punishment is at an appropriate level.”
He said minimum sentencing laws are costly and impact prison safety. Studies show that individuals serving time with minimum mandatory punishments have more disciplinary infractions in prisons, Myer said.
Minimum sentencing laws also can lead to overcrowding, which can put inmates and correctional workers in danger, he said. State prisons and local jails have been
pushed to their capacity limits,
and opponents of SB 2128 said the proposed legislation would create more inmates, as well as force them to stay longer.
Multiple groups, including out-of-state organizations, testified against the bill. That included the North Dakota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Prison Fellowship from Lansdowne, Virginia, and the Due Process Institute of Washington, D.C. Several cited increased costs to both the prison and judicial systems.
“What about the cost to the public?” said Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, adding she is concerned about the safety of her constituents.
Transitional and treatment centers have helped give felons second chances and opportunities to reinvent themselves, F5 Project CEO and founder Adam Martin said. He himself benefited from such programs when he was convicted of crimes.
“Based on the philosophy of truth in sentencing, I should have never gotten it,” he said, adding he would have served lengthy prison sentences.
Anna Paige / The Forum
Instead, he has never been to prison. He started an organization that helps people who struggle with incarceration, and Martin ultimately
was pardoned of his crimes in North Dakota.
The F5 Project has helped more than 40,000 people, he said.
Had he gone to prison, he believes he would not have gotten those opportunities, Martin said. Blanketing sentences will not benefit anyone, he said.
“I do believe what the speaker earlier said about mercy and grace. It works,” Martin said.
An 80-year-old North Dakota grandmother scammed out of $8,500 has her money back after Suffolk County prosecutors and postal inspectors traced the package of cash, which was mailed to a Shirley address, and returned it earlier this week, district attorney’s officials said.
Officials said the woman received a call Dec. 12 from someone pretending to be her granddaughter, saying she had been in a traffic accident in Suffolk County and needed bail money.
The caller said she was charged with three crimes and then handed the phone to a man posing as her lawyer, who gave the grandmother instructions on how to send cash through the mail, district attorney’s officials said.
The grandmother mailed the cash, but the man kept calling, pestering her for more money, prosecutors said. The woman, who eventually realized she had been scammed, called police in Devils Lake, North Dakota, and reported the con.
Detectives, who made no arrests, tracked the package to Shirley. The Suffolk County Financial Crimes Bureau then worked with inspectors from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intercept the package two hours after it arrived on Wednesday and returned the money to the North Dakota woman.
“Our office is dedicated to combating scammers who prey on the senior citizen community, who criminals believe to be easy prey,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said in a statement. “Bad actors should know that Suffolk County will not be a haven for mailing scams, and that we will do everything within our power to prevent citizens from being swindled by predatory scammers.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — North Dakota organizations have submitted letters of support for a federal bill that would improve veterans’ access to local health care options, which has been examined by the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
The bill – the Critical Access for Veterans Care Act – from Sen. Kevin Cramer and Sen. Tim Sheehy would allow veterans living in the rural United States to seek health care services at their local critical access hospitals or rural health clinics, a press release said.
“The Community Care program literally can be a lifeline,” said Cramer, R-N.D. “(What) prevents it from being a lifeline as often as it ought to be is all of the roadblocks that get put up. After hearing from veterans and rural health care providers and leaders across North Dakota, I proposed a solution with Sen. Sheehy to simplify access to the critical access network, whether it’s a critical access hospital (or) rural health clinic.”
Cramer and Sheehy’s (R-Mont.) bill would amend the VA (Veterans Affairs) MISSION Act of 2018 to make a new category under which “care is required to be furnished through community providers, specifically for care sought by a veteran residing within 35 miles of the critical access hospital or rural health clinic,” the release said.
The release also said a number of veterans live in rural areas and face major challenges to accessing timely and quality health care. In North Dakota, there are 37 critical access hospitals, but only five of those communities housing them also have a VA community-based outpatient clinic. The state has one VA medical center in Fargo and eight community-based outpatient clinics in total.
The bill has received letters of support from the North Dakota Rural Health Association and a coalition of 22 North Dakota rural health care providers, the release said, who wrote that the legislation will offer a streamlined and practical approach building on existing infrastructure and recognized designations in rural health care. The American Hospital Association, America’s Warrior Partnership and the National Rural Health Association have also voiced support for the bill.
Another letter of support for the bill has come from Marcus Lewis, CEO of the North Dakota Veteran and Critical Access Hospital. A veteran himself, he said he lives more than three hours from the nearest VA hospital and works two hours away from it. However, there are three community health care facilities within 50 miles of his home.
“Despite the availability of this high quality local care, I am currently paying out of pocket for needed therapy because accessing services through the Community Care Network has proven prohibitively difficult,” he wrote.
Cramer said the VA system gives veterans less access to care that is readily available, and the goal of the bill is to give rural veterans access to their local critical access hospitals without strings attached.
“I worry if the bill is watered down, quite honestly, that we turn the authority back over to the bureaucracy to decide,” he said.
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North Dakota lawmakers are exploring using telemedicine technology to ease staffing strains on rural emergency medical services, a potential solution to a growing shortage of paramedics and volunteer responders across the state.
Though some solutions were floated and passed during the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers are working to understand the scope of the problem before proposing additional legislative changes in 2027.
The state has been facing a societal decline in volunteerism, which strains traditional volunteer firefighter and emergency medical services that support rural communities, said Sen. Josh Boschee, D- Fargo. Adding to pressure, when a rural ambulance service shuts down, the responsibility falls to neighboring ambulance services to answer calls in the defunct ambulance service’s coverage area.
How could telemedicine ease strains on rural EMS staffing?
One idea presented to the Emergency Response Services Committee on Wednesday to potentially alleviate some of the stress on rural ambulances is expanding access to technology in the field for emergency medical personnel.
Emergency medicine technology company Avel eCare presented to the committee its system, which allows ambulance personnel to be connected by video with emergency medicine physicians, experienced medics or emergency nurses in the field wherever there is cell reception. The company already operates its mobile service in South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, according to the company’s presentation.
Avel eCare said this allows medics and paramedics to have any questions they have answered and provides a second person to help document actions taken when there is only one person in the back of an ambulance with a patient, which they say is increasingly common in rural areas. This allows one medic or paramedic to put more focus on the patient.
The company said it is innovating the ability to also bring medical personnel into the call from whatever care center the ambulance is heading to, allowing the care center to better prepare for the ambulance’s arrival.
Lawmakers said they were interested in the system and could see how it would provide a benefit to thinly stretched EMS personnel.
Boschee said the state should consider funding the system, citing its potential to support local EMS providers and help retain volunteers.
Avel eCare did not provide a cost estimate for North Dakota, but offered South Dakota as an example. That state used general fund dollars to provide the Avel eCare service free of charge to agencies. The state paid $1.7 million in up-front costs for equipment — enough to outfit 120 ambulances — and an annual subscription cost of $937,000 to provide their services to 109 ambulances serving 105 communities in the state.
“I think specifically … how affordable that type of solution is for us to not only support our local EMS providers, but also to keep volunteers longer,” he said. “Folks know that they have that support network when they’re in the back of the rig taking care of a patient. That helps add to people’s willingness to serve longer. And so I think that’s a great, affordable option we have to look at, especially as we start going in the next couple months and continue to talk about rural health care transformation.”
Rural EMS shortages go beyond pay, state officials say
There are 28 open paramedic positions in the state, according to Workforce Services Director Phil Davis’ presentation. The difficulty in filling these positions is not just about money, though that certainly plays a factor in recruiting people, his report said.
“I’ll just speak from my experience with my own agency,” Davis said. “After 18 years, it’s very hard for us to even recruit individuals into Job Service North Dakota because of the lower wages.”
Davis showed that 2024 salaries for emergency medical technicians were fairly even across the eight regions Workforce Services breaks the state into, with a roughly $6,500 gap between the highest and lowest averages. Law enforcement officer pay varied by about $8,320, while firefighter salaries were the biggest outlier, with a $20,000 difference between regions. While state wages may lag nationally, other factors are making rural recruiting particularly difficult.
Davis said it was largely a lifestyle change; people are not seeking to live rurally as often.
“We’re starting to see the smaller communities, for the most part — not all — starting to lose that population. And it is tougher to get individuals to move there or to be employed there,” Davis said.
Job Service North Dakota is holding job fairs to try to recruit more emergency services personnel, with some success, he said, and has nine workforce centers across the state working directly with small communities to help with their staffing shortages.
Davis advocated for more education in schools about career paths in emergency services and the openings that are available in the state.
© 2025 The Bismarck Tribune (Bismarck, N.D.). Visit www.bismarcktribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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