In the undercard to Beth Warden’s prison food story, we learn that Governor Kristi Noem’s 2021 prison purge and reform posturing appear not to have resolved a basic problem with working conditions in South Dakota’s correctional system: prison pay is bad. While Summit Food Service apparently underfeeds prisoners in the main chow line and drives more purchases of supplemental food from the commissary, it’s also offering some of its staff better pay than the prison guards:
There is an awkward tension while new Summit Food workers and Correctional Officers take the same first week of training together. The food workers often make more than the officers. All of this contributes to the lower morale of those working at the DOC, possibly contributing to a staff shortage at facilities like the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
“I don’t think the DOC is going to hang on much longer,” says the anonymous Correctional Officer. “That’s going to get to a point where the National Guard is going to have to get called in to run the prison. The last I checked, we’re still triple-digits short, like 103 officers I think,” he said. He estimates a full staff is approximately 250 people [Beth Warden, “Prison Food Monopoly? Same Supplier for Meals and Commissary Packages,” KSFY, 2022.03.22].
Dang: never mind competing with Nebraska prison pay; South Dakota can’t even compete with its own prison food service pay. Maybe we could just outsource our guard duty to the private cooks and ask the food service vendor to train its people to use their spatulas and ladles for riot control.
According to the Department of Corrections budget brief submitted to the Legislature on December 28, 2021, the Governor did not recommend any increase in spending on salaries or benefits for Corrections in Fiscal Year 2023. The $52,957,402 the Governor recommended for personnel costs matches the $52,957,402 allocated for Corrections total personal services in the FY2023 budget as adopted in House Bill 1340.
Pierre executive branch worms are infamous for their budgeting gimmicks.
If the DOC is short 103 guards . . . FTEs (full time employees) fully budgeted for . . . then in who’s pocket is lined with those unspent salaries and benefits?
That amounts to a range between $3 to 5 million dollars.
Inquiring minds want to know . . . because, well certainly no South Dakota legislator is curious.
VOTERS WAKE UP!!! WE NEED A CHANGE IN 2022….KRISTI CONTINUES TO DEMONSTRATE THAT SHE IS OVER HER HEAD IN GOVERNING, BUT EXCELL IN OUT OF STATE TRAVELING TO FORWARD HER PERSONAL AGENDA!! SAD, VERY SAD!!
John–your point about the shuffling of unspent personnel costs in Department of Corrections budgets is well taken..the charade has gone on for years.
Who wants to go to prison every day for those wages? You could move the prison to a poor town. Anywhere else in South Dakota? You could just raise the pay, but that goes against Republican ideology. If you gave free breakfasts Grudz would be a guard.
Mr. Anderson, the guards already get free breakfasts. You seem to misunderstand the entire concept of this pay issue. It’s not about free or cheap, it’s about quality. Mr. H, with grudznick’s help, sets you up to understand this but you just keep banging away on the metal with a brute force hammer. You can’t see how wise grudznick is.
A quality breakfast is what people need to be seeking.