North Dakota got a new crime report from Attorney General Drew Wrigley's office, and the numbers look pretty good.

The rate of incidents per 100,000 citizens for the most serious "Group A" crimes was down 7.4% from 2024 to 2025. Crimes against persons (murder, assault, etc.) were down 3%, crimes against property were down 12.2%, crimes against society (drug and gun violations, etc.) were down 3.2%, and total statewide arrests were down 3.7%.

But to hear Wrigley tell it, that's merely the plateau at the top of a rise in crime that he says necessitates the reform to sentencing laws he's been furiously campaigning for during multiple legislative sessions since taking office.

He'll be pushing hard for it once again in the upcoming legislative session (there's no real doubt that he'll be easily re-elected in November over Democratic-NPL challenger tim Lamb), though he says he's asking for something different this time.

"The proposal going forward, this is not the same we've done in the past," he said on this episode of Plain Talk. He says he's not asking for mandatory minimum sentences this time. Rather, he's asking for "truth in sentencing," or the requirement that some types sentences come with a prohibition on any sort of release before 85% of the sentence is served.

"I lost," he said, referring to the debates over legislation he's backed in previous legislative sessions. "They don't want to have long mandatory sentences. They don't want to extend existing sentences. And so, Drew Wrigley lost that battle."

During the interivew, Wrigley kept up his pattern of verbal assaults on the honesty and integrity of officials in Gov. Kelly Armstrong's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He accused them of "well-doumented prevarication" and even at one point used his fingers to do air quotes when he used the word "professionalism" for DOCR.

When challenged about that, Wrigley walked it back, saying that DOCR's personnel are professionals, but insisted "they have shown no capacity to deal with recidivism" and, furthermore, do not have the "constitutional responsibility" for it.

"They are the executive branch. They are to carry out the sentence the judicial judicial branch gave them. That's to be carried out by the executive branch, not altered as it is day one," he said.

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