(C) South Dakota Searchlight
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Taxpayers will pay the price for South Dakota's prison delay • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
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Date: 2025-03-06
The South Dakota Legislature’s inability to make the hard, forward-thinking decision to build a new prison likely will cost taxpayers dearly in the future.
Gov. Larry Rhoden’s decision to take the prison project from legislative action and create a working group to further study it was a disappointment to some House leaders who believed there was a possibility the funding could still pass. Apparently, Rhoden didn’t believe there was enough support in the Senate to proceed.
Now, Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen will chair a working group this spring and summer that will further delay and likely increase the cost of the prison.
The state has already spent or obligated $54.1 million on the project. The proposed site covers about 160 acres in Lincoln County and is located at the northwest corner of 477th Avenue and 278th Street. The state owns another 160 acres straight south. All of the land passed into the ownership of the state Office of School and Public Lands years ago when the owners died without heirs or a will. The state Department of Corrections “bought” the land by transferring $7.9 million to the school trust fund.
The state had a guaranteed maximum price of $825 million for the prison as of November. That guaranteed maximum expires this month, and historical trends show costs are likely to increase.
South Dakota Searchlight, in a story on Jan. 4, 2024, quoted Venhuizen saying the worst of the pandemic-related disruptions and supply shortages in the construction industry had eased, and that “construction prices have stabilized,” leaving the industry with “more of an ability to predict costs.”
That’s an optimistic attitude.
One thing that could decrease the need for a prison to house 1,512 inmates is a significant overhaul of South Dakota’s criminal penalty system. We are a state that has one of the higher incarceration rates.
According to “States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2024,” released by the Prison Policy Initiative, South Dakota’s incarceration rate would rank 10th in the world if every U.S. state were a country. We are even worse than Cuba. Our state incarcerates 812 people per 100,000 compared to 794 for Cuba and 560 in North Dakota.
Ironically, some of the legislators who opposed building the new prison also opposed decreasing penalties for ingesting drugs such as marijuana from a felony to a misdemeanor. That bill did pass narrowly and is awaiting Rhoden’s consideration. At the same time, the Legislature also has created several new felonies this year.
As the new prison task force again studies the issue, they’ll likely rediscover things already known.
There still is a need for a new men’s prison to replace the aging penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
There probably won’t be any other available location near Sioux Falls that will be better than the Lincoln County land.
People in Lincoln County won’t be any more supportive a year from now if plans go back to a prison there.
Nobody wants a prison in their backyard, and that won’t change anywhere across South Dakota.
Finally, given the ultra-conservative makeup and limited visionary leadership ability in the current Legislature, there won’t be much appetite to make major sentencing reform changes.
The question then ultimately returns to whether we continue to use an antiquated prison and remain in our backward, vengeance-based justice system of incarceration rather than rehabilitation, or we take the big step and do what is right.
Let us know what you think...
Most likely this Legislature, which calls itself conservative, will have wasted a year or two, and the price tag will be $40 million or more higher than today.
It’s not like South Dakota hasn’t taken on big projects before.
In 2022, the Legislature authorized the South Dakota Board of Water and Natural Resources to distribute $600 million in American Rescue Plan Act federal grant funding. Of all the criticism former Gov. Kristi Noem heaped on President Joe Biden, she never criticized this money.
The grant funding enabled our towns, cities and rural water systems to make dramatic improvements to their drinking water, wastewater and sanitary landfill systems.
At one meeting on April 12, 2022, the board awarded almost all $600 million in grants to pair with nearly $1 billion in new debt for $1.6 billion in local projects, many of which are just beginning.
About 70% of the 103 applicants, communities small and large alike, had to create new taxes to be able to pay the bonds back.
In the years since, at least another $500 million in water-related debt has been placed on our cities, not counting the loans other state agencies have approved.
Now, it’s time to address another neglected pillar of infrastructure, our men’s prison.
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