Last updated on 2021-07-16
So the state fails to give State Penitentiary guards enough pay and support, and the Governor suspends the Warden and the Corrections Secretary?
An anonymous complaint circulated among correctional officers in May prompted Governor Kristi Noem to announce last night that she is putting State Penitentiary Warden Darin Young and Secretary of Corrections Mike Leidholt on administrative leave:
At approximately 7:00 pm Central time tonight, Governor Noem was briefed on a summary of an internal review conducted by the South Dakota Bureau of Human Resources that was prepared as part of an investigation following an anonymous complaint. A copy of the anonymous complaint can be found here.
In light of that internal review, a few moments ago, Governor Noem placed Secretary of Corrections Mike Leidholt and State Penitentiary Warden Darin Young on administrative leave.
“My top priority as governor is keeping South Dakotans safe, and that includes the men and women who work at the State Penitentiary and those who are confined there,” said Governor Noem.
The Governor announced that she will appoint Tim Reisch to serve as interim Secretary of Corrections. Reisch retired in 2019 after eight years as Adjutant General of the South Dakota National Guard. From 2003 to 2011, Reisch served as Secretary of Corrections. Prior to that time, he also served as Deputy Secretary of Corrections and as Miner County sheriff. His appointment is effective immediately.
Governor Noem also announced that Doug Clark, the Deputy Secretary of Corrections, is stepping in as acting warden of the State Penitentiary until a longer-term interim can be named. The Governor has also assigned two members of her cabinet to work from the Penitentiary and assist Acting Warden Clark in addressing this internal review: Darin Seeley, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Human Resources (BHR); and Laurie Gill, the Secretary of Social Services and a former BHR Commissioner and Mayor of Pierre.
Governor Noem has instructed General Reisch, Acting Warden Clark, Secretary Gill, and Commissioner Seeley to take immediate action to address this internal review and to commission an independent third party to investigate the penitentiary and offer additional recommendations.
No further comment will be made at this time [Office of the Governor, press release, 2021.07.13].
I don’t allow anonymous comments, let alone make staffing decisions based on anonymous complaints. So whatever source-able evidence worked its way through the Bureau of Human Resources must have been pretty serious to make Kristi do anything after supper besides barking for Fox News.
But the anonymous complaint released by Governor Noem with her announcement last night identifies six major areas of grief, at least two of which—pay and benefits—are the result not of poor management by the warden and the Secretary but by budget decisions made higher up in state government:
Senator Reynold Nesiba (D-15/Sioux Falls) mentioned the benefits issue raised in Point #3 back when intrepid KSFY reporter Beth Warden brought up these complaints in May:
One of the concerns is the reduction in health benefits; something that used to draw people to apply for a state position according to District 15 State Senator Reynold Nesiba.
“So, Senate Bill 57 that passed this past year allows the state to charge premiums to state employees in the past, state employees themselves were not charged a premium, they were charged premiums if they had spouses or children on the plan,” said Sen. Nesiba.
The bill was touted to save the state money while providing wage increases.
…“That eight of that $12 million is brought is really from higher premiums being charged to state employees, which are then being used to raise the wages of some state employees. So it’s almost as if we’re trying to tax state employees to raise, to raise their wages,” said Sen. Nesiba [Beth Warden, “Concerns Raised over Correctional Officer Safety, Benefits, and Pay at South Dakota State Penitentiary,” KSFY, 2021.05.12].
So if part of the grief correctional officers are experiencing comes from reduced benefits, replacing the warden and the Secretary won’t solve the problem; we’ll have to replace the 92 legislators who voted to reduce those health benefits and the Governor who signed that reduction into law.
Likewise on pay and likely spending and safety equipment and training: the replacement warden and Secretary won’t be able to spend any more on staff and security than the Legislature and the Governor have appropriated. If the Governor is just sending in General Reisch to tell all the Guards to put their positive pants on, the practical basis for most of the above complaints will remain.
Of course, cash didn’t save Mike Leidholt’s bacon. After Noem appointed Leidholt to Corrections at the beginning of her administration, the former Hughes County sheriff gave Noem’s campaign $2,000 in 2020: $1,000 on October 24, reported on the Kristi for Governor October 26, 2020 supplemental filing, on top of an apparently separate prior donation of $1,000 reported on Noem’s 2020 pre-general report. It is nice to see that not every staffing decision Noem makes is guided by nepotism and sycophancy (although it appears daughter Kennedy is paying for grad school with mom’s money again, this time as her campaign finance director).
I don’t see Young on Noem’s 2020 campaign finance papers. Young was appointed warden of the Pen in 2013 after a couple years wardening the Minnehaha County Jail and 21 years before that working for the DOC. As warden, Young was struggling with recruitment and retention back in 2019, when he started offering retention bonuses and advertising to hire additional guards authorized by the Legislature.
Point #6 in the anonymous complaint makes clear there may be more wrong with South Dakota’s corrections department than the labor shortage and underfunding that plagues pretty much every public agency and private industry sector in this shoestring-budget state. Below the allegations of nepotism and sycophancy (which, again, you guys think Kristi Noem is the right person to fix?) is an allegation of sexual harassment. Noem has shown a willingness in the past to wage war on sexual harassment when such warmaking can benefit her politically (though after that 2018 splash, she hasn’t done much to follow up on sexual harassment in law enforcement to hold actual perpetrators accountable). Does Noem just need to lop off some heads for headlines, or is she preparing a genuine reform of South Dakota corrections backed with real money and FTEs?
Update 16:11 CDT: KELO-TV catches up with KSFY and reports that the Corrections Department has faced high staff turnover for several years and offers the lowest annual average salary for prison officers and jailers in the five-state region.
Another area where the South Dakota anti-union attitude produces its results.
How does money solve the sexual predation and covert stalking issue?
Yep, John Dale figures in his conservative trumpy lizard brain, that those the state puts in charge of prisoners should be happy with less than flippin’ burger pay. Just ‘cuz.
“Be glad ya got a job” mentality1
I’ve noticed there’s a high turn-over rate in the Noem Administration. Several high-ranking resignations and now this suspension makes me wonder what is really going on in Pierre? What is the turn-over rate on lower-ranking executive staff members? Do you know, Cory? Many people have left Noem’s staff with no explanation and my guess is that they can not say anything because they signed a non-disclosure agreement. With this latest story, I wonder who is truly accountable or are they being scapegoated? In the past 27 years, I’ve lived in South Dakota three separate times and I do not remember so many people jumping ship from the Governor’s office under previous administrations. From my own experience, if a staff experiences consistently high turn-over rates, it usually points to poor morale and that points to poor leadership.
Look for an out of state hire.
Truth in advertising. https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10219603223246724&set=a.1888811175566
Sheesh, sounds like your typical suicidal low wage job in South Dakota. I feel for those workers. They deserve better, much better. I could get the Union boys here in MN to help y’all organize a strike. Solidarity is what brings positive change.
Kristi Noem selfish Trump Minion….
Ironic she ballyhoos about teachers must only instruct about the most wonderful country the USA and now the revelations that thousands of indigenous kids…including Native American kids from South Dakota… were abused, murdered, and buried in Pennsylvania and Canada. Better not talk about CRT here in South Dakota!
SD US Rep Dusty Johnson reiterates that Trump the liar lost the election whilst Noem glorifies Trump the insurrectionists…all on the same day!
Jake – so, you’re saying people who make more money are less likely to be sexual predators?
I don’t see how paying more, unionizing, and striking will prevent predation of subordinates.
Horrifyingly, if this leadership’s disposition is to abuse fellow officers, what would they do to prisoners?
Murder them and blame it on Covid?
Force them to play football against the guards?
Slip covid (or something else) into the scrambled eggs?
Exploit the families of inmates?
I bet this is just the tip of the ice berg.
John, read the whole article. As I say in the last paragraph, better funding does not inherently solve the sexual harassment alleged in the anonymous complaint. But implementing accountability may well require better funding and hiring of more staff.
Unionizing gives employees a stronger support network. Labor organizations can protect employees from retribution and provide legal counsel.
Striking can bring abuses to light and pressure management to respect workers and act on worker complaints.
The fact that abusive managers may still prey on workers even if we pay them more is not a reason to ignore paying workers more as the solution for the majority of the complaints the workers have.
Now let’s watch for Gov. Noem to play the same game John D is playing here: waving the sexual harassment flag to distract us from all the other problems. Kristi may only be able to deal with one problem at a time and may only want to deal with the sexual harassment as a political prop to the exclusion of the harder fiscal problem of properly funding her corrections system (start with restoring the more affordable health insurance that she took away). Effective governors and other managers can deal with multiple problems at once to improve their organizations.
Noem did the easiest thing she could: she whacked the two top guys, who were, of course, carefully shielded from any knowledge of the various things that were going on in the pen and afterhours. The problem is that the problem is complex (as so many problems are):
(1) $$$. You can’t hire and retain good employees to work hard, long hours in an environment with a more than average level of danger at less pay than the COs at the Minnehaha jail, or in neighboring states. And many COs race to any police officer / deputy sheriff opening as soon as they can find it – more pay, and less hours on their feet. (Working the tiers means 8 hours a day running up and down concrete steps, etc.)
(2) The sexual harassment, nepotism, etc., is largely due to a very macho, old-fashioned, unsupervised work culture. To change it would / will require a change in training and hiring practices.
The pay is the easiest thing to solve. And probably the least likely to be solved. The prison doesn’t get much money – most classes were cancelled years ago, the food is outsourced to the cheapest provider (I’m told that 50 cents per prisoner per day was the bid, and having eaten there regularly in my years as a volunteer, I believe it), and everything is pretty bare bones. (Which is why I volunteer.) If you don’t believe me, I can take you in and show you around, as long as you can pass a background check. Let me know.
Cory, sadly, J Dale is so likely not to read and cogitate on the REAL meaning of the written word you post-people like him want only to see THEIR thoughts. Sorta like the ones who adhere to the “Big Lie”; their ‘god-head’ idol spoke it, must be true.
JD-you’re trying hard to find excuses to pay people less, and less-not proportionately per responsibility. You are specious!