SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — Throughout the week, we’ve been reporting on the meetings held by Governor Larry Rhoden’s Project Prison Reset Task Force. And now, we’re hearing from some of the members about their tour of the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
Wednesday’s tour came as the task force explores more options about building a new men’s prison, after funding for a Lincoln County facility failed to find support in the legislature.
Descriptions of what they saw behind prison walls ranged from “difficult,” to “a dungeon.”
Task force members respond after 2 days of prison talk
Sheriff Mike Milstead has been inside the South Dakota Penitentiary multiple times during his decades in law enforcement. But Wednesday’s four-hour tour of the pen was still eye-opening to him.
“In particular, the living conditions and the working conditions in the the old hill, or the old cells that you see when you’re on North Drive. Almost reminded me like an above-ground dungeon,” Milstead said
State Rep. Greg Jamison says checking out the conditions of the penitentiary almost became secondary to being in the presence of the inmates.
“I saw sadness, I saw humans depleted, I saw angry people. The building was one thing, I had seen parts of it before, but it was honestly, the human side of it that was the most striking of all,” Jamison said.
State Rep. Erin Healy was one of just a handful of women on the tour, giving her a different perspective of life behind bars inside a men’s prison.
“And seeing their bathroom and the places where they shower, I don’t want to say uncomfortable, but just different,” Healy said.
Both Healy and Jamison say the highlight of the tour was seeing the job training underway at the prison’s Pheasantland Industries.
“And we saw some inmates working there. You can tell that they’re so proud of the work that they do and they’re happy to be there, they’re learning skills that are going to be incredibly useful for them when they enter back into society,” Healy said.
The task force members say seeing first-hand the stark conditions inside the penitentiary further underscores the need for a new men’s prison.
“I don’t really care where this new penitentiary is. Let’s find the best space that will gather the most support,” Healy said.
“It’s pretty hard to go through a building like that and think, okay, we can do better, we can have a safer place,” Jamison said.
“Seeing the living environment and the work environment there, was somewhat embarrassing as a South Dakotan, that we haven’t done more earlier. So, I think this is the chance we have to change that,” Milstead said.
Milstead says he’s also given members of the task force tours of the Minnehaha County Jail that opened in 2003 and expanded in 2019. He says the goal is to give task force members an idea of what a state-of-the-art housing facility should look like.
