Governor Larry Rhoden and his hand-picked Corrections Secretary Nick Lamb canned the warden of the state penitentiary and two other Corrections leaders on Wednesday. Out are warden Joseph Roemmich, who lasted little more than a year, Director of Prison Operations Amber Pirraglia, and prison administrative Major Cody Hanson. Lamb and Rhoden have promoted Tabatha Benting from running the Jameson Annex to run the entire pen, making her the fifth warden there since 2021.
Seeing the ongoing leadership churn, Corrections-keen Representative Kadyn Wittman (D-15/Sioux Falls), rightly expresses concern that the system is losing institutional knowledge:
Rep. Kadyn Wittman, D-Sioux Falls, is chair of the state’s Corrections Commission. The group is meant to offer guidance on corrections policy, and to approve any spending decisions on prison industries.
The loss of so many leaders is a concern for Wittman. Beyond the wardens, other long-term employees — including Doug Clark, the former deputy corrections secretary who served as interim warden after Young’s departure — have left the prison system over the past five years.
“There’s no real institutional knowledge left,” Wittman said.
Wittman would like to see the commission move toward monthly meetings and address questions about leadership and institutional knowledge, as well as employee retention more broadly… [John Hult, “South Dakota State Penitentiary Loses Fourth Warden in Five Years amid Senior Staff Shake-Up,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.08.05].
Preserving the knowledge gained by experienced prison leaders and passing that knowledge on to everyone else staffing the Department of Corrections and to new staff coming in is essential to making South Dakota’s prisons run well. It’s also vital to making sure the new penitentiary the state is building in Sioux Falls and the reforms coming from the Governor’s Correctional Rehabilitation Task Force improve South Dakota Corrections. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken. You can’t get to good solutions if you don’t know what problems exist and what may already of been tried that failed to solve those problems.
Convening Rep. Wittman’s Corrections Commission more frequently would capture more of Corrections’ institutional knowledge, put it on the record for the public, and put it in the hands of the legislators and other members of the public who serve on that commission who might well stick around longer than some of the prison leaders whom they should oversee. Experienced and frequently informed commission members could then listen to new reports and proposals from new wardens and other Corrections officials and say, “Wait a minute—didn’t we already try that a few years ago?”
Of course, we could also improve institutional knowledge by hiring wardens who are good enough to hold the job for more than a year, but Secretary Lamb and Governor Rhoden will have to figure that one out on their own.