Multiple inmates sent to hospital days after protests over prison security and inmate treatment

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5 days ago

People hold signs as organizer Tracii Barse speaks during a protest on May 23, 2025, at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
A flurry of fighting broke out again Tuesday in the maximum security building on the campus of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, according to the Department of Corrections.
The violence comes less than a week after a protest over prison security and the treatment of inmates, and less than a month after the last publicly acknowledged sparring between inmates on the prison grounds in Sioux Falls.
The Tuesday incident sent an undisclosed number of inmates to local hospitals, but DOC spokesman Michael Winder said none of the injuries were life-threatening.
The 'series of fights' took place at the same time in 'multiple sections' in the D block of Jameson Annex, Winder wrote in an email to South Dakota Searchlight.
No correctional staff were injured, Winder said.
The Jameson Annex, built in the mid-1990s, is the area that houses the inmates dubbed most dangerous during initial intake. Jameson is also home to that initial intake area, as well as to inmates with severe mental illness and those being held for disciplinary infractions.
Some members of the state's Project Prison Reset task force, as well as some lawmakers who aren't on that prison construction work group, have pushed to build an additional floor onto Jameson to provide partial relief to overcrowding across the prison system.
Attorney General and work group member Marty Jackley mentioned a possible Jameson expansion in a television interview Tuesday.
Earlier that day, agents with the state Division of Criminal Investigation, which Jackley oversees, were on site at the Jameson Annex. They are leading the criminal investigation into the fights, Winder told Searchlight, alongside the DOC's Office of the Inspector General.
Winder also sent a statement from DOC Secretary Kellie Wasko on Tuesday's Jameson violence, in which she praised 'the staff's immediate, appropriate and professional response,' which she said 'brought quick order to ending the fighting.'
'Our staff did recover homemade weapons that were utilized in the fights,' Wasko wrote.
A similar fight broke out in Jameson a few days before the first meeting of the Project Prison Reset work group, which aims to resolve the yearslong debate over new prison construction in South Dakota.
As the work group pores over facility plans and consultant reports – its next meeting is set to commence Tuesday in Pierre – family members and advocates for inmates have grown increasingly frustrated with the DOC's response to violence across the system.
On May 4, fighting broke out in East Hall, which is part of the penitentiary complex that opened in 1881. The prison work group voted earlier this month to replace that portion of the Sioux Falls campus, although the size, cost and location of the replacement are still up for debate.
About 50 people gathered outside East Hall on Friday to protest prison conditions, including Marlene Woodraska. She told South Dakota Searchlight in earlier interviews that her son R.J. committed suicide at Jameson in October, after she alleged the DOC had failed to protect him from prison gang threats.
On Friday, Woodraska told the assembled crowd about her son's suicide but stopped abruptly, saying she wouldn't be able to continue without crying. She and R.J.'s sister-in-law held a sign bearing R.J.'s likeness throughout the protest.
Donna German, meanwhile, said her son was injured in another recent round of prison violence.
'He is currently healing from 22 stab wounds,' German told the crowd before accusing the DOC of giving her son 'Band-Aids and two little packets of bacitracin' in lieu of more serious medical care.
Protesters also spoke of overdoses, demanding that the state investigate them and address the issue of drug use inside the prison.
Last week, Jackley's office confirmed that two deaths days apart at the prison this month – one in Jameson, one in the penitentiary – were being investigated as overdoses.
Another inmate, 20-year-old Anthony Richards, died of an overdose in early February at the Jameson Annex in Sioux Falls.
The state certificate that lists his cause of death was filed nine days ago. An autopsy concluded that he'd died from the 'self-administration of drug synthetic cannabinoid 5F-ADB,' which is one formulation of a drug commonly referred to by inmates as 'K2.'
On Wednesday, Richards' sister said the family has yet to hear from anyone with the state about the cause of death, or about any investigation into the overdose.
Tracii Barse, organizer of Friday's protest, told the crowd that the state needs to get its house in order before it commits to building upwards of $2 billion in prison facilities. That's how much a recent consultant's report suggested the state would need to spend on new prisons to deal with current overcrowding and future inmate population growth.
During the protest, Barse balked at the focus on new facilities in the face of what he called the state's current failures.
'You guys can't even run this one,' Barse said, pointing to East Hall.
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