The State of South Dakota has a $608-million-dollar plan to build new prisons. Legislators, counties, and sheriffs are clamoring for some of those dollars to build more county jails.
But South Dakota already locks up its people at the 12th-highest rate in the U.S. and in the world:
…and that high incarceration rate isn’t making us noticeably safer.
Are we ready to learn from North Dakota and Norway, treat prisoners more humanely, and reduce our corrections costs? Or are we going to keep pouring more money into bricks and bars
Related Responses: Most crime victims don’t want more prisons and punishment; they want investment in programs to rehabilitate offenders and prevent crime.
In my home state of South Dakota imprisonment is simply passive ethnic cleansing.
As most Americans know, if you’re Black and/or Brown in the United Snakes you’re more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession. My home state of South Dakota is infamous for it where a state trooper routinely spent his time systematically profiling cars with license plates from states with legal cannabis until a Washington man stood his ground. Cannabis is legal in Washington but South Dakota convicted African-American Donald Willingham with multiple counts in Pennington County after Trooper Zach Bader illegally profiled the vehicle in which he was riding on Interstate 90.
The overwhelming number of people profiled from legal cannabis states on I-90 are persons of color as is the population in South Dakota’s jails and prisons. Black man Yiel Wuol of Spokane, Washington and Joshua McLean of Raymond were arrested and convicted in South Dakota after being pulled over for driving TWO MILES AN HOUR over the speed limit!
I’ve had some contacts with Pennington County’s Veterans Court, which is part of the statewide Problem-Solving Court System. Seems to be having some success. https://www.sdstandardnow.com/home/veterans-court-column
That’s an interesting survey. While I don’t disagree with the majority on that survey, the results really seem to clash with the attitudes people hold towards others in their daily lives. It’s interesting where people draw their lines in terms of who/what they’re willing to forgive and have empathy for. For instance a felon is worthy of empathy, but the guy who cut you off in traffic is the worst person in the world for some people. People should also remember that they don’t get to pick and choose who’s deserving of human treatment in prison.
Again Cory, your Governor is attracting very interesting people to your state. The mayoral candidate Grant is one such Posse Comitatus type. Your going to need more cells with that type moving in.
But Mr. Grant’s type doesn’t do jail time, Mr. Anderson. The governor only welcomes white “very fine people”, like how trump described the hateful douche nozzles in Charlottesville. They aren’t even good enough to be the bag part of the douche in my book. Just the floppy nozzle part like on a calf drencher.
I agree, Cory re rehabilitation and treatment.
But I will also say, after 12+ years of volunteer work at the South Dakota State Penitentiary, we desperately need to replace the 1880s prison a/k/a The Hill. From the cells to the 5 story tiers, hardly any handicapped accessibility, and other troubles, it needs to be demolished and a new one built.
And the elephant in the room would be? The general correlation between state incarceration rates and state poverty rates? Leading to the conclusion that we lock up people primarily because they are poor.
Well, Eve, if they decide to build a new one, they should keep the historic parts, not demolish them. That is history on that Hill, and it should be preserved. I’m not sure what they could do with it, but it would make a great movie set or be redeveloped into “Heartbreak Hotel,” where you get to sleep in the cells for $300 per night.
Ben, that’s an interesting point you make about how there’s perhaps a disjunction between the instant rage people express on the road over minor perceived slight‘s and the expectation we might draw from that quick outrage the crime victims would have more of a lock them up attitude, an expectation not supported by the survey site above of crime victims attitudes toward incarceration. I’m not sure how to explain that possible disjunction. Perhaps the difference comes in time and deliberation. Maybe if those crime victims were surveyed the moment after they’ve suffered the crime, they would respond with the same heat drivers Xpress on the road the moment some knucklehead cuts them off. But maybe the survey talked to crime victims months or years after the crimes, when they had had time to think about the crime and the criminal and the conditions that may have led the criminal to commit the crime. Maybe those victims witnessed the court proceedings, saw the treatment, whether incarceration or rehabilitation, to which the criminal was sentenced, and had a chance to evaluate what works and what seems fair.
Eve raises a fair practical point: whatever focus we place on incarceration and rehabilitation, we still need safe, functional facilities in which to conduct those activities. But that’s all the more reason to reflect on our remarkably high incarceration rate, to ask what return we are getting for that investment in incarceration, and to ask very seriously whether we could spend our limited funds more efficiently, for better overall social and economic outcomes. Maybe instead of building a new penitentiary on assumptions that we need more prison cells, We could invest in more rehabilitation programs, build fewer prison cells, and maybe still have some money left over to preserve a little of that architectural history that Donald recognizes in the state pen.
Mike and Rhonda Milstead are salivating
like Pavlov’s dog.
Well…I agree with DaveFN that poverty has a direct correlation to incarceration. There are kids out there who never stand a chance. They just get swallowed up by circumstance and do not have the social or educational skills to overcome their environment. We should not go on incarcerating for long terms individuals from a certain socio-economic background. The Pen is another issue that is chronic. The first buildings went up as a Territorial Prison. There is not much state infrastructure left from the 1880’s. I would suggest smaller facilities at different sites, with distinct roles in the rehabilitation process and with many other alternatives to incarceration developed and maintained….Vermont does a good job with this. We should look to incarcerating about half or less of the number we lock up now.
My problem with incarceration is we put the wrong people in prison. Look at the crime wave that is Donald Trump, a crime boss with a lot of people soldiering in his crime syndicate. They all need to spend the rest of their lives in prison. I don’t like violent crime or high level property crimes. A lot of the embezzlement stuff is because of legalized gambling. Shut it all down, let the petty crooks out and stick the owners of the gambling dens in. Same with the payday lenders, the car title loaners and all the other scum the prey on the poor.
Oh Mr. Pay, I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t let 99% of the fellows who get locked up come and stay at your sweet lake house, so stop the pontificating. The fellows locked up are locked up for being dregs and derelicts. We either lock them up or we build a condo in your neighborhood into which they all live, free of charge. Unless you have a better idea besides making the Demon Weed be free of charge and provided like school lunch meat at breakfast, to all.
Prisons are ethnic cleansing devices for 1 Party R rule.
Democratic Party has no plan to get rid of this system.
D Party has no newspapers or recruiters or people telling me what the plan is to abolish this unfair prison system.
Since the D Party has no plan to take power EVER again and abolish this ethnic cleansing, I think they are me too-ing it. ‘oh what the Republicans do, we can do too, only better, but we have no plan. No plan, no success.
The laws are askew and unbalanced. That’s why the incarceration rate is so high.
Our 2 party system will not correct this. Full period stop.
Only a center left coalition in power for 40 or 50 years will abolish the prisons and ethnic cleansing misguided laws that are crushing brown and red people. Some white people have lawyers and never see prison, everyone else goes into the prison Insurrectionist lobbyist 1 Party bad system.
The central left coalition properly organized, can win and crush the Repiblicans for 50 years till at least 2072.
Why? Because intelligence will rise to the top. The people subconsciously want a larger life. The way to have this is to vote for people who will help us all make it happen. The progressives we cannot win if we believe change has to happen maybe every 2 years by elections only. With computers we can easily have elections every week or two times a week, maybe every Monday and Thursday. The future can be lived now as we bring our near future wishes aspirations and goals into our consciousness now, living our future Now in the enjoyable earthshaking nanoseconds of now, never surrendering our aspirations and now-visions to a future decided every 2 Novembers. We will engineer this and do this. Dismantle the DemRepublican do little or nothing-ocracy. In its place a vibrant government that recognizes that every person is valuable and irreplaceable will build OUR future every day, never ever waiting for a far distant November.
Grudz, Well, it would be nice if I had a lake house, but I don’t. I’ve lived in some pretty rough and tumble neighborhoods, Grudz. I have no problem with the dregs. The derelicts I can tolerate for a time. I never found these folks very threatening, actually. Annoying, maybe, but not threatening. I do find drug lords threatening, which is why I have come around to supporting legalization of most banned substances. But, It’s the elite criminal element I want locked up. The Trumps, and the die hard insurrectionists, including the money men who back them, are on my Most Wanted poster. Just under them, I’d put the political lying class who try to take away everyone’s right to vote. I’d put racists and sexist up there as well. After watching the Judge Jackson hearings, I’d put Graham, Hawley and Cruz on my list. Lock ’em up. I’d put Blackburn in the mental institution. That lady is nuts.
Of course, if South Dakota (and the US) simply adopted the common sense laws and experience from Portugal to decriminalize the individual possession of small quantities of drugs – the “prison problem” would disappear.
Drug use declined. Drug related crime declined. https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/