The Regional Corrections Board met on Monday, July 14, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. at the Polk County Justice Center.
Monthly Statistical Reports
Tri-Valley Community Corrections Executive Director Andrew Larson reviewed June’s Statistical reports. As of Monday morning, there were 149 inmates. Larson reported that numbers have been steady for per diems, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Immigration and Customs (ICE). “We have got quite a few Immigration and Customs placements, and those are, as I explained to the board, people that are coming to us from Immigration agencies literally all over the place,” says Larson. “We don’t necessarily even know where they are coming from, but they are certainly not being pulled out of local communities. We are probably getting these placements from all over the Midwest.”
Some of the top offenses for June were: Assault/Domestic Assault (23), DUI (32), Parole/Probation Violation (35), Hold for Immigration (25), and Failure to Appear (19).
The numbers at the Juvenile Center have remained healthy. Monday morning, there were eight children, five on residential and three on Secure. The average for the year at this point is about 10.7. “It’s been great to keep the secure side open. It really helps, not only operationally, but it helps to fill a void we have been seeing across the state.”
There were 58 new individuals placed under supervision in June on probation, and 78 total new adult cases. Of the 78 cases, the vast majority, 57 of them, were for felonies. “One thing I did mention to the board in terms of a monitoring trend, we have quite a few more assault or domestic-related offenses, both in the jail and on probation,” says Larson. “That will certainly be something we will have to continue to monitor. That can really create some challenges on the probation/supervision side of things because complexities often come with managing the relationship dynamic, and desires to reconnect. We will have to take a look at that.”
Personnel Issues
Larson is happy to report that they have had no significant changes in personnel recently. “Personnel, nothing really significant there, we had a few new appointments; an employee passed their probationary period. We did have a couple of resignations and terminations,” says Larson. “Overall, we are sitting better than we have in a while. I think right now we are looking at three or four full-time employees that we continue to try to find. We are backgrounding a couple of people right now, and we have a few more interviews scheduled, so overall, I think we are doing pretty well there.”
Paid Family Medical Leave – RFP Result
In January 2026, Tri-County Corrections must offer Paid Family Medical Leave to its employees, and Larson gave the board results from the RFP put out to find a plan that worked for them. “Legislation in Minnesota was adopted to create a Paid Family Medical Leave Plan, which will go into effect in January 2026,” says Larson. “With that, the State is going to have a plan, managed by the state; however, you don’t have to use the State plan. You can also use private plan options as long as they meet the minimum criteria established by the state.” Larson says of the RFP responses they got, MetLife put together the best response, which was slightly less than what the State premium is expected to be. It also gave a 2-year rate guarantee. Larson recommended that MetLife be the company Tri-County goes with, and the board agreed unanimously.
Member County Rate Review – Residential and Transition Services
As an information item for the board, Larson spent some time speaking on the current rates charged for member county, residential, and transitional services. It was eye-opening for the board. “Spent quite a bit of time visiting with the board about just where we are at in terms of member county rates for our residential program at the Juvenile Facility as well as our Transition Program,” says Larson. “We have not done any rate increases to any of our member county social service agencies for residential services in over 20 years. Actually, what we charge today for a residential placement is less than we charged in 2006.”
Larson feels it is time to start this discussion as they are now working on the budget, and everything needs to be looked at. “It is just really shifting county dollars from one to another, which I agree with, part of that is why we hesitated to make much of a request for increases,” says Larson. “As my budget continues to grow exponentially by keeping the costs that are then passed off to social services agencies, my budget ends up looking worse.” After taking time to compare our Juvenile Center with others across the state Larson says our rate structure is way out of wack. He informed that board that most jurisdictions are charging about 80% to member counties than they are to non-member counties. Here at Red River Valley Juvenile Center Larson says they are charging around 30% to member counties. Larson will put together some calculations for the board along with rate changes that they could look at carrying out over the course of three year so it doesn’t seem like just a large hit all at once.
Payroll Software Update
The payroll software used by Tri-County Corrections is being updated to stay in line with Polk County’s new system. “Polk County is moving to upgraded payroll software. They want to retire the AS400, the old system, and move to something a little more modern,” says Larson. “Since Polk County is our Fiscal Host, we use the same software. So, if they are moving to a different software, it’s going to require us to do that as well.” Larson says he has met with UKG a few times now to go over options and how it can potentially work for them. He says that UKG is a really robust product and that it can dramatically improve from everything he has seen.
Community Crime Intervention Program grant application updates
Larson updated the board briefly on the grants he applied for earlier this month. “I just got those submitted in the early part of July. The grant review processes do take some time,” says Larson. “I’m hoping maybe September, October we will receive news on that. These are funds through the Office of Justice Programs. We currently have one of their grants, which funds our pre-trial supervision program.” Larson says they submitted two grant applications. One is to continue the pre-trial supervision program, which is for $498,000. The other grant is for expanding the Transition and Diversion Programs, which is for $499,000. Larson says you can apply for as many as you want, but only one can be awarded.
Contracts/Agreements
Larson brought two contracts to the board. One was informational only, and the other needed action taken on it. Both had to do with the Department of Corrections’ Work Release program. “One was an amendment to our 2025 contract, which ended on June 30. Because we have seen so many referrals from the DOC, we had to allocate additional funds so the contract amount would not be exceeded; they added $40,000 to the 2025 contract. Then we renewed the Work Release Contract for 2026 as well.” The total allotment for the contract did not change for 2026 which is up to $150,000, but the rate that they are compensating at increased from $60-75 per day for someone on work release.
Miscellaneous
Funding for the Reaching Rural Initiative ended abruptly in April 2025. All services have been stopped, and Tri-County is still waiting on reimbursement. “We received notice that that was ending effective April 22,” says Larson. “So, that’s already been ended. The new part of this is the request for reimbursement that we submitted for any expenditures we had prior to that date. We are in July now and still haven’t seen any money.” Larson says they got information that they are waiting for the Feds to release money, so he remains hopeful that they will get reimbursed for services that were expended, but he says, there are no guarantees. The amount outstanding from the Reaching Rural Initiative program is $25,000.
Lastly, Larson informed the board that the Minnesota Association of Community Corrections Act Counties Annual Conference is from Wednesday, September 24, through Friday, September 26, 2025. He encouraged the board members to contact him if anyone wanted to attend, as it is geared towards Commissioners and Advisory Boards.
The next Regional Corrections meeting will be on August 11, 2025.