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Name change for Department of Corrections falls flat on SD House floor • South Dakota Searchlight [1]

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Date: 2025-03

The South Dakota Department of Corrections will remain the Department of Corrections.

On Monday at the Capitol in Pierre, the state House of Representatives voted 55-14 to defeat a bill that would have changed the agency’s name to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Senate Bill 192 previously sailed through the Senate without a single dissenting vote.

The bill wouldn’t require any immediate changes. Instead, it would update references and things like uniforms and agency letterheads whenever those updates or reorders would’ve happened without the bill.

Resistance in the House began in its State Affairs Committee, where the bill passed 8-5 despite worries about potential hidden costs and the bill’s failure to make more than symbolic change.

Doubts on the idea overshadowed arguments in support on the House floor. Rep. Tim Reisch, R-Howard, told his fellow lawmakers about his time as DOC secretary in the early 2000s to explain his opposition. The state had a boot camp for kids when he took the gig in 2003, but the DOC was in the process of reworking its operations.

The facility in Custer was renamed as the State Treatment and Rehabilitation Academy, or STAR Academy.

“If I’d just changed the name to STAR Academy and kept the boot camp, we’d be doing the same thing we’re doing here,” Reisch said.

The legislation was proposed in the Senate by Jamie Smith, a Sioux Falls Democrat. Rep. Peri Pourier, D-Rapid City, called the bill virtue signaling “at its finest.”

“We have to change the way we do corrections in South Dakota to earn a name change like this,” Pourier said.

But Rep. Erin Healy, D-Sioux Falls, the bill’s prime sponsor in the House, said a state that’s debating a new prison and the role of rehabilitation in its correctional frameworks ought to name its prison system accordingly.

“This is a change that starts a conversation,” Healy said.

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[1] Url: https://southdakotasearchlight.com/briefs/name-change-for-department-of-corrections-falls-flat-on-sd-house-floor/

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