Update 12:38 CST: Hold the phone… or change those calls to your legislators from cranky to grateful! Multiple Pierre denizens point out to me that the Senate ditched SCR 7 because they folded its intent into SB 167 on Monday! Task force is coming… as long as the wackies in the House don’t kill it. I apologize for not catching the Monday debate on alternatives to throwing drug users in jail. See my updated post here!
With its vote Monday for Senate Bill 66, the South Dakota Senate said it is willing to spend time and money studying the rural electric/municipality spat over who provides power in territory newly annexed by towns, an issue that, while exciting and complicated, doesn’t appear to ding the state budget. But yesterday, the Senate turned down Senate Concurrent Resolution 7, a proposal to study alternatives to throwing drug users in jail and maybe save the money millions of dollars.
The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota is disappointed. Noting that South Dakota is the only state where ingestion of controlled substances remains a felony, the ACLU says the Senate is passing up an opportunity to do some good:
Assigning years in prison to those who have a drug present in their system is disproportionate and causes more harm than good to individuals struggling with addiction, their families and their communities
“Though drug use is undoubtedly a serious issue, we can’t incarcerate our way out of addiction,” said Libby Skarin, ACLU of South Dakota policy director. “Instead of using an enormous amount of taxpayer funds to prosecute and incarcerate drug users, reclassifying ingestion as a misdemeanor and investing the resulting savings of state funds in diversion and treatment programs designed to combat addiction would go a long way in helping to solve the underlying problems leading to drug abuse” [ACLU-SD, press release, 2019.02.26].
The Senate killed a proposal last year to drop the penalty for ingesting controlled substances from Class 5 and 6 felonies to Class 1 misdemeanor. In a fiscal note prepared for that failed bill, the Legislative Research Council (possibly the single most useful state agency in my daily life after the DoT snowplow crew) estimated that that one legal change would save the state $50.3 million in prison costs and the counties $10.1 million in jail costs over ten years.
Joining the ACLU in supporting the mere study of alternatives to convicting drug users of felonies and incarcerating them were the state’s sheriffs, state’s attorneys, and criminal defense lawyers.
Now notice that the Senate didn’t straight-up vote against SCR 7. Instead, without debate, on the motion of prime sponsor Senator Craig Kennedy (D-18/Yankton) himself, the Senate voted unanimously to table the resolution. The resolution itself may be dead, but tabling sometimes signals someone has a different idea for achieving the same goal. The Legislature’s Executive Board will still get together after Session to empanel interim study committees; maybe the Senate just wants to make sure there’s still room to fit an ingestion-incarceration-alternatives study into the interim calendar.
But still, the Senate didn’t see the need to wait on the rural electric/muni spat; why wait on studying ways to save money (and lives?) by getting users off drugs instead of the lazy Ravnsborg response of throwing them in the clink?
Mr H,
They killed SCR7 because they passed a bill out of the Senate that actually structures what he wanted in the SCR: http://sdlegislature.gov/Legislative_Session/Bills/Bill.aspx?Bill=167&Session=2019
But are they sent to prison for ingesting? Isn’t the Public Safety Improvement Act (Senate Bill 70) still in force so offenders aren’t sent to prison but get probation and serve time in the county jail, maybe they still get a felony, not that law enforcement necessary supports even that more moderate approach.
http://psia.sd.gov/
https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/south-dakota-substance-abusers-can-now-avoid-prison/article_1eb82b56-277d-5e1f-b7b1-9070344a4212.html
https://www.mitchellrepublic.com/news/3985571-legal-battle-sb-70-creating-rift-between-officials-judicial-process
The ignorance and hypocrisy of beer drinking midwesterners who condemn recreational drug use is as stunning as it is unsurprising.
Thanks for the good information Stace. Ryan yes we know you are a “liberal” who likes recreational drugs and is ignorant about addiction medical science:)
https://sdlegislature.gov/Legislative_Session/Bills/Bill.aspx?Bill=167&Session=2019
There was a resolution and a bill with the same goal in mind. The bill will be moving to the House soon. It’s been a bipartisan effort. Both Kennedy and Partridge have worked on it.
BTW we in the breaks, badlands and Paha or He Sapa are part of the mountain west
leslie, you know less than half what you pretend to know. You confuse guessing with knowing. Any idea what background I have regarding human psychology and criminology? No? Cool, thanks for incorrectly guessing and proving you’d rather insult a stranger than know what you are talking about.
BTW, nobody says mountain west, you sound pretentious like porter.
You picking a fight with me, little boy? You’ll go home crying like the last three times. I choose Leslie to piss on your bones. Debbo, BCB and Jenny already have.
PS … four million people live in the Mountain West and use the term all the time. Rapid isn’t really SD at all. It’s more a part of Wyoming than it’s a part of the Sioux River basin.
Senator Nelson is right! Thank you, Senator Nelson, for correcting my concern. See update here!
{And knock off the fighting, boys, or take it elsewhere.]
Kelly is right, too! Thank you for the update!
done
Not that it matters one iota … I give up posting on all social media for Protestant Lent every year and sometimes take the summer off, too.
Love you all and proud to be involved with the woke people of SD.
PS … Happy Mardi Gras ☜ ⚜ 😉