Work group aims to ditch baggage, find solutions in prison talks

Yahoo

01-04-2025

A rendering of a new men's prison proposed for an area of Lincoln County about 15 miles south of Sioux Falls, presented to state lawmakers on Nov. 14, 2024. The complex would house about 1,500 inmates. (Courtesy of SD DOC)
Members of a prison work group say they'll need to leave the past in the past if they expect to find consensus on new facilities for the state's correctional system.
There's plenty to leave behind, they acknowledge.
Gov. Larry Rhoden wanted lawmakers to greenlight a 1,500-bed, $825 million men's prison in Lincoln County during this year's legislative session. He needed support from two-thirds of them. He didn't get it.
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That proposal's critics — some of whom now serve on the work group — complained about a lack of transparency, as well as the price tag, facility size and the plan's focus on a single site.
Backers, meanwhile, argued that waiting will only cost taxpayers money. The $825 million price tag was guaranteed through Monday.
Money questions will loom large. Lawmakers have set aside nearly $600 million for prison construction since 2023, and the state's already spent $55 million on the Lincoln County prison plan.
The work group has four planned meetings between now and July. The first, a two-day affair in Sioux Falls, begins Wednesday morning.
State Senate Majority Leader Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre, a work group member, backed the Lincoln County site during the legislative session. He said it'll be hard to 'unlearn things,' start fresh, and accept that the road may — or may not — lead back to Lincoln County.
The conversation might end, he said, with 'boy, we really screwed up when we wasted all that money on that Lincoln County site.'
'If everybody's going in there with the preconceived notion of where we're going to wind up, it's going to be pretty difficult to reach consensus,' Mehlhaff said.
The Rhoden executive order that created the 'Project Prison Reset' work group lists three goals: decide if the state needs a new facility, work with a consultant to figure out its size and location, and report findings to a special legislative session on July 22.
Wednesday's meeting starts with a morning tour of the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, the 1881 structure the proposed Lincoln County prison was meant to largely replace. A tour of the Lincoln County site, located 14 miles south of Sioux Falls, will start at 2 p.m.
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The penitentiary tour is not open to the media or the public 'for security and logistical' reasons, the meeting agenda says. Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen, who will chair the work group, said there are too many people already to add media to the mix.
The media will be able to tour the penitentiary in the weeks between now and July 22, Venhuizen told Searchlight.
'We're very open to the idea of, at some point, coordinating another tour for media members,' Venhuizen said, adding that he'd need to check in with Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko to find a suitable time.
The group's first session will continue Thursday at 8 a.m. at the Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls with a series of informational sessions on inmate job training, behavioral health, prison industries and re-entry programs. A public comment period will start at 12:30 p.m. that day.
Neighbors to the site of the now-paused prison project sued the state because it didn't ask for the county's permission to build there. They lost at the local level, and the state Supreme Court heard arguments on their appeal last week.
The plaintiffs are constituents of House Speaker Pro Tempore Karla Lems, R-Canton, who voted against funding the project this year. She's also appeared at the group's public events. She's now one of 11 lawmakers on the 22-member work group.
The $55 million spent on that site gives Lems heartburn. Lawmakers approved $62 million for prison planning in 2024, but Lems said the executive branch spent more than it should've, given that the Lincoln County site lacked a final legislative blessing.
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Lems is encouraged that Rhoden's office has committed to a 'palms up' process for the meetings, and that the group's been advised to 'start from scratch.'
But 'the Lincoln County site is out there' and will need to be addressed.
'I don't want to be the NIMBY person,' Lems said, using an acronym for 'not in my backyard.' 'But I do want to have a site that actually makes sense.'
Lems argues that some of the money spent for the site, such as the funds used to buy a stake in electrical and rural water infrastructure, won't be completely wasted if the state can find a better plan. The rural customers will still benefit, she said.
The site 'makes no sense to me at all,' she said. Rhoden called the site near Sioux Falls 'a gift from God' because the state already owned the land, and because of its relative proximity to the interstate.
More than once during the 2025 session, Mehlhaff called on lawmakers to avoid 'analysis paralysis' on the prison issue. The state hired a consultant, the DLR Group, to review its prison needs in 2021. A small group of lawmakers digested the findings and recommended a 1,500-bed prison the following summer, adopting the guidance of the Department of Corrections on the best path forward.
There's broad agreement that the state needs to do something, he said — and fast — to ease the overcrowding issues dissected throughout that report, he said.
'I'm going to be focused on finding a solution rather than focusing on finding a problem that prevents us from finding a solution,' Mehlhaff said. 'You can go down that rabbit hole, and that's what was done before.'
Some opponents to the Lincoln County plan have zeroed in on the DLR report's recommendations for multiple, smaller facilities across the state. Lawmakers funded a medium-security women's prison in Rapid City nearly three years ago based on that report, and construction on that $87 million facility is ongoing.
Mehlhaff's not convinced that smaller facilities for male inmates would make more sense than a centralized location.
'If you spread them out among four different places, you'll have to duplicate programming, you'll have to duplicate food service, you'll have to duplicate prison industries,' he said, but added that he and every other member needs to be ready to hold preconceived notions in abeyance.
'We're supposed to be taking a fresh look at it, right?'
Assistant Senate Minority Leader Jamie Smith, D-Sioux Falls, led an effort to rename the Department of Corrections the 'Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation' during the legislative session. The pitch sailed through the Senate but failed in the House of Representatives.
Smith, now a work group member, had hoped a name change would set a tone for the department. There is programming now, but Smith said the ideal is a department that focuses as much on preparing inmates to succeed on the outside as it does on housing them.
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Smith said he intends to honor the group's three stated goals, but hopes issues surrounding rehabilitation and finding ways to reduce the state's long-term need for prison beds are in the mix.
'I do believe that we need to make sure that is the focus, and ultimately what we're trying to do,' Smith said.
House Minority Leader Erin Healy, of Sioux Falls, is the work group's other Democrat. She's concerned about crowding and security in the 1881 facility. She got a letter recently from a Sioux Falls inmate concerned about safety in the current building, as well as a lack of access to rehabilitation and their ability to 'live a dignified life.'
During her last tour of the penitentiary, locked-down inmates let loose similar concerns as lawmakers walked by.
'They know that if you are with Secretary Wasko, you're probably somebody who's making decisions for them or our state,' Healy said. 'That's kind of what I witnessed last time.'
The current penitentiary's condition is top of mind for Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead as he prepares for the first work group meeting. He works closely with the DOC as the elected overseer of a county jail that serves as a pretrial waystation for future penitentiary inmates or parolees nabbed and detained for violations.
Milstead has questions about the price tag and the DLR report's alternative options, but said 'the aging facility up on top of the hill is in need of replacing.'
In 1998, the sheriff had a similar problem on his hands, though 'on a much smaller scale.' His jail was old, inefficient and dangerous, he said, so he went to the public to ask for support.
The Argus Leader newspaper's photographers and cameras from local TV stations were invited to visit. That gave Milstead a chance to make the case that a new jail, built with room to expand in the future, would be preferable to upgrades at the old one.
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'I am so glad we did not try to cobble together the old jail above the public safety building,' Milstead said.
Yankton Police Chief Jason Foote heads the South Dakota Police Chiefs' Association. He'll represent local law enforcement on the work group.
He's hoping to learn more about how the DOC's crowded facilities and operations might play into the system's handling of the parolees his officers deal with regularly. He wants parolees held accountable for their actions, he said, which 'can be pretty severe.'
Law enforcement 'has a lot of interactions with those that have been in and are now out.'
'So I think it's important to look at the recidivism, and what the prison system can do to maybe change some of the behaviors of people,' Foote said.
Like Milstead, though, he's coming to the group without having gone through the legislative battles on what kind of facility the DOC might need. He hopes to offer a different perspective as a result.
'I'm coming in with an open mind,' Foote said. 'I'm not biased either way.'
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