The late Honorable Dennis Challeen, former municipal judge in Winona, wrote a collection of brief stories and meditations on the nature of life and justice, and it is on the Krueger Library’s retention list. He was a national advocate for restorative justice, as opposed to incarceration. He writes in his eighth story/meditation: “We know by conclusive research that locking up people to rehabilitate them doesn’t work; in fact, it makes most of them worse. … Punishment buys votes, but not public safety.”
In his very first story, he recounts that, when he imposed a stiff fine on a defendant, the defendant complained that if he had to pay that much, he would have to move in with the riff-raff living in the boathouses on Latsch Island. The rest of the courtroom burst into laughter, because Judge Challeen at the time lived in a boathouse on Latsch Island.
Challeen, Dennis A., and William Boughton. Swamp Water Jurisprudence: A Candid, Sometimes Humorous Journey into the Backwaters of the Criminal Mind and Our Criminal Justice System. Winona, MN: Swamp Water Press, 2007.
Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. This is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.
