In July, the Project Prison Reset Task Force voted 20-0 to direct the Office of the State Engineer and Department of Corrections to propose a plan to build a 1,500-bed facility in the Sioux Falls area, with 1,200 beds being multi-level cells and 300 beds being dorm style, with a construction quality to last 100 years, and a total project cost not to exceed $650 million.
In September the South Dakota Legislature approved the Task Force’s proposed plan. This prison plan has received the unanimous endorsement of our state’s Police Chiefs’ and Sheriff’s Associations, State’s Attorney Association, County Commissioners Association, and our attorney general.
Despite this approval, a handful of shrill critics are spreading false claims that the new men’s prison is a money-making human trafficking scheme to import out-of-state prisoners for money and that it is a “maximum security prison with 2,100 beds for 39 people.” No evidence is offered to support these inflammatory claims, and there is none. It is time for the truth to prevail.
South Dakota does not sell beds to house another state’s inmates. South Dakota participates in an interstate compact that allows states to trade inmates. Every state belongs. There is no profit motive for states to import or export inmates. Inmate transfers are done to promote staff safety, inmate security, witness protection, and to split up gang members. Inmates are returned to their home state before release.
A provision in the new men’s prison legislation specifically prohibits the temporary detention of non-adjudicated, non-citizens who are the subject of deportation proceedings by the United States Department of Homeland Security. The only way in which any such person could become incarcerated in the South Dakota prison system is to have committed and been found guilty of a crime in South Dakota. If an illegal immigrant murders someone, then they are in our prison for murder and they are deported after justice is served.
The new men’s prison is a Level-V facility specifically designed to house all inmate classifications. Level V is the highest security level. A Level V facility is like having a five-speed manual transmission in your pickup. It just means that you have all five gears available when you need them. The same is true with a Level V facility having 1,200 concrete and steel cells. These cells can be used for high, medium and lower security inmates as necessary.
The Jameson Annex is a Level 5 facility, currently housing about 500 inmates. It will be repurposed to house a specialty population because of the newly added clinical space at this facility, which will include offenders with serious mental illness and/or health concerns, protective custody, and sex offender treatment programming.
The new men’s prison will have 1,500 total beds, not 2,100. It will have 1,200 inmate cells made of hardened concrete for close and medium security inmates and a 300-inmate dorm. A 100-year construction standard calls for using concrete rather than sheetrock and metal framing. The cost of the cells is the same for close and medium-security inmates. Using cheaper construction materials would require constant repair and periodic replacement of damaged walls.
If the Jameson Annex continued to house close security inmates and if the new men’s prison was all medium-security, the guaranteed maximum cost of the new men’s prison would still be the same $650 million.
Jameson Annex has a capacity in its present use to house 576 inmates. It appears that those claiming the new men’s prison will have 2,100 beds are apparently adding up the total 1,500 beds for the new men’s prison, adding the Jameson Annex capacity of 576, and rounding up the 2,076 sum total to 2100. The flaw in this calculation is that Jameson Annex will be repurposed.
Closing the men’s penitentiary on the hill will allow 800 medium security inmates to relocate from the old prison to the new men’s prison, 300 medium security inmates will be moved from the over-crowded prison in Springfield, and inmates from the over-crowded minimum security centers will go into the new dormitory.
Critics of the new men’s prison don’t seem to grasp that each incarcerated person is, like the rest of us, a unique, complete human being to be treated with dignity, regardless of the circumstances. This is not to say that we condone criminal behavior any more than we would compromise the safety of ourselves and our families.
However, we help ourselves when we provide opportunities for inmates who desire to work for a better future for themselves and their families. Though they have lost the right to move freely among us, each offender is a part of our South Dakota community. It is critical that we provide the opportunity and the pathway for a better future, as this in the end will make for a safer and secure future for us all.
Rep. John Hughes represents District 13 in Sioux Falls.
