Omnibus public safety policy law

The omnibus public safety policy law contains numerous policy provision impacting public safety, public safety officers, corrections, crime victims, and criminal investigations and offenses , ranging from ensuring that a crime victim has the right to object to a plea agreement to banning prediction market wagering.

The wide-ranging law, effective Aug. 1, 2026, unless otherwise noted, is sponsored by Rep. Paul Novotny (R-Elk River) and Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park).

Department of Public Safety provisions in the law include:

• designating as private data certain information collected by the Office of Justice Programs;

• requiring the Office of Missing and Indigenous Relatives and the Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls to provide case support to victims and families. Data created as part of case support work will be classified as private;

• requiring a prosecutor to make a good faith effort to inform a crime victim of an impending plea agreement and informing the victim of the eligibility for automatic expungement of any offense pleaded to or dismissed as part of the plea agreement;

• clarifying that crime victims have the right to object to a plea agreement at a plea hearing and requiring judges to ask if a victim has an objection;

• adding stalking to the definition of “violent crime” in the victims’ rights statute;

• requiring courts to ask a prosecutor if any crime victims wish to submit a victim impact statement at a sentencing hearing; and

• directing the Revisor of Statutes to change “battered women” to "domestic abuse victims” or a similar term in state statutes. (Art. 1, Secs. 1, 4-21, 24-33)

Identity theft and financial crimes provisions in the law include:

• authorizing the Office of the Attorney General to issue administrative subpoenas to gather information related to a law enforcement investigation of financial crimes and fraud, including fraud involving state-funded or administered programs or services and insurance fraud;

• adding “forged digital likeness” to the crimes prosecutable under identity theft statutes; and

• extending the statute of limitations to seven years for several financial crimes and crimes involving fraud, including theft by swindle, failure to pay state funds, fraudulent certificate of title and receiving stolen property. (Art. 3, Secs. 1-4)

Department of Corrections provisions in the law include:

• modifying rules on how medications are disbursed to persons in jail;

• placing new regulations on MINNCOR Industries, the business program run by the Department of Corrections that employs inmates in state facilities to manufacture products and provide services;

• effective Sept. 1, 2026, requiring the corrections commissioner to consider an inmate’s efforts to pay court-ordered restitution before placing the inmate on supervision abatement status;

• establishing a working group to recommend statutory changes needed to provide clarity regarding the roles, responsibilities and obligations of supervision delivery systems when a county transitions between state-operated and county-operated community supervision systems. This is effective July 1, 2026;

• modifying statutes regulating the licensing and inspection of juvenile and adult community-based residential correctional facilities; and

• specifying licensing actions the Department of Corrections can take to correct deficiencies at juvenile and adult community-based residential correctional facilities. (Art. 4, Secs. 1-8; Art. 5, Secs. 1-9)

Domestic violence provisions in the law include:

• requiring a sheriff, law enforcement officer or designee to make reasonable efforts to notify a petitioner before or immediately after service of a restraining order that the respondent will be or has been served the order;

• requiring the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in its annual report to indicate the number of incidents that began with a law enforcement response to a situation involving suspected or alleged domestic abuse;

• modifying procedures a domestic violence victim can use to be released from a shared wireless plan and obtain a new telephone number;

• effective Jan. 1, 2028, requiring local law enforcement agencies to catalog every incident a peace officer reasonably believes, or a victim alleges, constitutes an act of domestic abuse be included in an annual report to the Department of Public Safety; and

• allowing peace officers 14 days to make a warrantless arrest of a person accused of committing domestic assault who flees the scene of an assault. (Art. 6, Sec. 4; Art. 7, Secs. 1, 3, 5-6)

Miscellaneous provisions in the law include:

• adding to the statutory list of aggravating factors applicable to felony sentencing situations where an adult offender intentionally deceives a minor victim into believing that the offender was also a minor to facilitate the commission of the crime (Art. 6, Sec.1);

• making it a felony to create a prediction market, operate a platform where users can make wagers in a prediction market or advertise or market financial or technological products that promote prediction market wagering (Art. 8, Secs. 1-3);

• effective May 19, 2026, allowing the denial of public employment or a professional license to someone based on a criminal conviction unless the applicant shows evidence of both rehabilitation and current fitness to perform the duties of the position or licensed occupation (Art. 9, Secs. 1-3);

• effective Oct. 1, 2026, prohibiting a person from selling or transferring a law enforcement vehicle to the public without removing any equipment or insignia that could mislead a reasonable person to believe the vehicle is a law enforcement vehicle (Art. 12, Sec. 1);

• adding certain cancers and infectious diseases to the conditions that qualify as duty-related deaths for peace officers and firefighters. This took effect May 19, 2026, and applies retroactively to Feb. 1, 2020 (Art. 12, Secs. 2-9); and

• establishing the Task Force to Establish a Statewide Network Funding for Public Safety Radio Communications Infrastructure and make recommendations regarding transitioning the Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response (ARMER) network and related interoperable communications to a statewide, state-funded framework. This, too, took effect May 19, 2026. (Art. 12, Sec. 12).

HF3990/SF4760*/CH97

SF4760* / HF3990 / CH97