Winona County justice programs engagement
Engage Winona worked with Winona County from March to May 2021 to gather public input and ideas on its justice programs, share information about current programs, and explore ways the public can engage collaboratively with the county.
Our presence in this project was to hear and amplify community voices, collect and present input and requests from the community, and identify potential paths for the county and community to work on together.
Final report + next steps
In June, we released a final report condensing input and recommendations from the community and suggesting future next steps and collaborative actions based on both the May event and the overall project.
May collaborative action gathering
We hosted the third and final public event on May 26 – the focus was on taking steps toward ways the community and county can work together. Participants joined folks from the county in breakout rooms of their choice:
YOUTH COMMUNITY-BASED PROGRAMS AND SERVICES – Identifying largest needs, what resources already exist, meaningful and achievable next steps
ADULT COMMUNITY-BASED PROGRAMS AND SERVICES – Identifying largest needs, what resources already exist, meaningful and achievable next steps
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND HEALING PROGRAMS – Exploring ways of providing additional community support, program expansion and growth, presence outside justice system
Read the notes produced from the May event.
April Q&A forum
On April 29, county officials responded to nearly 20 questions posed in the March listening session and survey, ranging from whether the county plans to consider a juvenile facility to how the community can work together on programs outside the system.
Watch the video from the Q&A forum here:
What we heard
We have released three harvests of what participants have shared during the project – a report on the March listening session and survey, a full set of responses, and the county’s responses to nearly 20 questions raised during an April public event.
(VIEW/DOWNLOAD: LISTENING SESSION+SURVEY REPORT
(VIEW/DOWNLOAD): LISTENING SESSION+SURVEY RESPONSES
(VIEW/DOWNLOAD): Q&A WITH WINONA COUNTY OFFICIALS
What happened
Engage Winona held a virtual listening session March 24 attended by nearly 100 people.
Additionally, more than 130 unique individuals completed a survey between mid-March and early April.
Within this engagement, we recorded nearly 500 comments relevant to a variety of core issues related to Winona County’s justice programs and system.
We released a full report of the themes and focus areas that emerged from the listening session and survey.
We also released a comprehensive appendix of all responses we recorded.
We presented the listening session and survey findings to the Winona County Board of Commissioners on April 13.
We held a public Q&A with county officials on April 29, focused on responses to the questions raised during the March listening session – more than 50 attended.
We released the answers from the event, responses to nearly 20 questions – ranging from whether the county plans to consider a juvenile facility to how the community can work together on programs outside the system.
We hosted the third and final event on Wednesday, May 26 from 6-7:30pm – focused on collaborative action and next best steps forward. About 40-50 people attended, working in three small groups: youth programs, adult programs, and Restorative Justice+healing programs.
We released the final report and next steps in early June 2021.