Rehabilitation, reduction in repeat offenses will require ongoing investment, task force says

It would cost at least $1.9 million a year to begin addressing shortcomings in rehabilitation within South Dakota’s prison system, according to the consultants hired to assess the system and recommend fixes.

That money’s needed to pay rehabilitation-focused staff members at a market rate, fund housing and transportation support for people after their release, and to pay community partners to offer ongoing support to parolees after release.

“You have to look at all parts of the elephant,” said David D’Amora, a senior policy adviser for the Council of State Governments Justice Center. “You have to look at what happens on the way out, and what happens when they are out.”

The $1.9 million annual figure is a floor. It’s the ongoing price of recommended changes before factoring in the cost to hire additional staff — which the consultant also said is necessary immediately, but did not offer cost estimates for — or any additional operational costs associated with the $650 million men’s prison under construction in Sioux Falls.

The state’s Correctional Rehabilitation Task Force heard the consultant’s final recommendations on Thursday at the Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls. 

Gov. Larry Rhoden convened the task force after lawmakers greenlit the prison project, which will replace the oldest parts of the 144-year-old state penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

Its goal has been to study ways to reduce repeat offenses in a state where half of former inmates commit a new crime within three years of release.

The group will meet one more time to sign off on a final report that’s meant to incorporate the consultant’s recommendations and those penned by four subcommittees of task force members that labored between public task force meetings. The document is meant to guide discussions on prison budgeting and policy change when the legislative session begins in January. 

Sara Friedman, the program director for the Justice Center, lauded the efforts of the group and the Department of Corrections thus far, but also said the state is unlikely to see repeat offense rates decline quickly.

“Making big shifts inside prison always takes time, more time than we want it to, frankly,” Friedman said. “You all are starting a yearslong process.”

Costs for staff, quality assurance, community partnerships

Salaries represented the largest single ongoing expense in the consultant’s document. It would cost $821,720 a year to bring pay for the Department of Corrections’ program director and its behavioral health staff up to market rates.

“Those are the folks that particularly find other employment at much better rates,” D’Amora said.

The state also needs to spend around $700,000 a year for “peer support” contracts with community organizations to help people leaving prison do things like find work, set and get to appointments and manage the stressors of life on the outside, the consultants said.

Work, housing and staffing: How South Dakota’s corrections chief aims to keep inmates from returning

They said the state should also spend $150,000 a year for a “landlord liability fund,” which would compensate landlords for housing people with felony convictions if those people are unable to pay rent, and $250,000 a year in transportation support, which could include bus passes for parolees.

Rich Merkouris, who’s on both the task force and the Sioux Falls City Council, said the city already has a landlord liability fund, but needs program managers to help connect people to housing. 

“The issue is there’s not case managers in place for the individuals that qualify for the fund,” said Merkouris, adding that he’d rather see the state help connect people to existing programs.

Merkouris also said the city would happily give 90-day bus passes to people leaving prison, but it doesn’t have anyone to run such a program.

D’Amora said the idea is to set aside funding for housing and transportation that could be used to fill gaps statewide, like in cities where there are no buses and no source of funding to encourage landlords to rent to ex-felons.

The state needs more program, parole agent and correctional officer staff, the report says, but the state would have to decide how many.

That frustrated Tesa Schwans, a task force member and Republican state representative from Hartford.

“My question goes back to, and it’s pretty simple, pretty blunt: How many correctional officers do we need? How many parole officers do we need? And how many instructors are needed? Do we have any of that data?” Schwans asked. 

Brent Fluke, deputy secretary for the Department of Corrections, said the state’s still working through its programs to decide which will stay and which will go as it makes organizational changes to trim its waiting list and move inmates through them more efficiently. The department is also trying to decide whether to add parole officers after moving some experienced officers into an enhanced compliance unit that monitors parolees on nights and weekends.

The state will need more staff to do what’s needed, but “I would say that’s a work in progress,” Fluke said.

The department is looking at a quality assurance officer for programming, however, and at adding a correctional officer duty post at the penitentiary to make sure it has enough security staff to move inmates safely to and from class, and to monitor them during class.

Officers are sometimes pulled away from programming duty to work in other parts of the prison with higher security needs, effectively shutting down rehabilitative programming until enough officers are available to oversee it.

Final recommendations coming next month

The task force first heard the consultant’s recommendations, then approved a 34-point document that referenced the consultant’s findings and the work of subcommittees on education, faith-based rehabilitation, tribal concerns and behavioral health.

Each point was discussed and voted on for inclusion in the final report, due for review at the task force’s Nov. 30 meeting. 

Poor coordination, missing documents, mismatched training: Report analyzes prison releases in SD

The addition of a duty post for programming earned support, as did recommendations to prioritize literacy programming, GED classes, partnerships with technical schools, the pursuit of a tribal liaison to help parole officers work with “willing” tribes, adding tribal-specific programming and a tribal cultural liaison inside prison walls, and adding evening volunteer hours to support those who visit and train inmates through nonprofit or religious organizations.

One religious program, a prison seminary program that trains inmates to act as moral guides inside the walls, was formally endorsed, although it had been in the works already. The first seminary class will begin in January.

The group also endorsed “full funding” and appropriate staffing for the new men’s prison. Ryan Brunner, a policy adviser for Gov. Rhoden, said the estimated annual operational cost for the new facility is $44.6 million, about $20 million more than the cost to run the current Sioux Falls-based prison operations.

Rep. Greg Jamison, R-Sioux Falls, said he was pleased with the task force’s work, but he’s concerned about what happens when the work is done. Rhoden’s executive order disbands the group in January.

The next crop of lawmakers might not go for the task force’s ideas, particularly the ones that require long-term commitments.

“Who is going to hold all of this together?” Jamison said.

There’s little the task force can do on its own to make sure anyone does, said Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen, who leads the group. 

“The best we can do is set things in the right direction and hope that our successors follow through,” Venhuizen said.