Minnesota

What Minnesota's records show, how much of the state the FBI's data covers, and where the state publishes its own.

How Minnesota handles a case

Sets bail first: Officer in charge of the jail by citation; district judge at first appearance
Who that is: Judges and others
Release on a schedule: Unknown
Time to see a judge: 36 hours
Money bail: Allowed
Risk assessment: Minnesota Pretrial Assessment Tool (MNPAT) (statewide)
Prosecutor: County attorney, one per county, elected
Public defense: Statewide public defender
Jails run by: County sheriff

Who decides release first: Police and the jail must cite and release most people arrested for misdemeanors. A person still held may post bail under the district court's bail process or schedule, or sees a district judge, who sets release conditions. A 2018 Judicial Council policy says it ended bail schedules statewide, but the rule still mentions them, so whether jails release on a money schedule is unclear.
Minn. R. Crim. P. 6.01 Minn. Stat. 629.72 House Research, Bail and Pretrial Release in Minnesota (Aug. 2024)Minnesota Pretrial Assessment Tool Validation Study (May 2023)
Time to see a judge: A person arrested and not released must see a judge within 36 hours, not counting the day of arrest, Sundays, and legal holidays. After a warrantless arrest, a judge must also find probable cause within 48 hours, counting every day.
Minn. R. Crim. P. 4.01, 4.03
Money bail: Minnesota courts may set money bail. A judge who sets conditions must also set an amount of money bail without other conditions, which the person can post instead.
Minn. R. Crim. P. 6.02 Minn. Const. art. I, sec. 7

Crime and arrests

No figures yet

Reported offenses and arrests per 100,000 people, year by year, and how Minnesota compares with the country. They will come from the FBI's state totals.

FBI data coverage

Population covered: 99%; of Minnesota's people lived under an agency that reported to the FBI in 2025.
Agencies on NIBRS: 99%; 398 of 400 agencies send incident detail. The rest send summary counts or nothing.

2 agencies not reporting through NIBRS

Lake of the Woods County Sheriff's OfficeCounty
Pine To Prairie Drug Task ForceOther

Counties and agencies: no data yet

Every agency in Minnesota by county, with the year each began sending incident detail to the FBI. They will come from the FBI's agency list and its NIBRS master files.

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, pulled 2026-09-26.

State crime reporting

Program: Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), Minnesota Justice Information Services (MNJIS)
Incident reporting: BCA NIBRS repository (statewide move to NIBRS in 2021); no separate brand name found
Annual report: Minnesota Uniform Crime Report (older editions: Minnesota Crime Information)Latest edition: 2025. Editions online 1934 to 2025.
Online portal: Minnesota Crime Data ExplorerData since 2021.
What changed: BCA launched the Crime Data Explorer in 2021 with the NIBRS transition; the annual report became a summary of the explorer's data. Use-of-force data in the explorer starts in 2020. The 2025 report was re-issued as amended, and 2024 has a .docx addendum.

Links and years checked 2026-09-26.

Minnesota sources

2 sources

Minnesota Crime Data ExplorerState · MN
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension · Incidents, Arrests, Use of force · dashboard · continuous
BCA NIBRS explorer with data from 2021 on (use of force from 2020); older data is in the annual Uniform Crime Report.
Minnesota Judicial Branch dashboardsState · MN
Minnesota Judicial Branch, State Court Research · Courts · dashboard · annual
Tableau Public: filings by county 2017 on, charge level by statute. Site 403 to scripts; case extracts under a data use agreement.

Plus 83 national sources, from the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Census Bureau, the courts, and others.