State seeks reform of crime system

SIOUX FALLS — State leaders from all three branches of government announced Tuesday the creation of a work group to study possible ways to reform the criminal justice system in an effort to control its rising costs in South Dakota.

The state’s prison population has grown by more than 500 percent since 1980, to more than 3,600 inmates, and consumes more than $100 million a year. The work group will study sentencing and Department of Corrections policies to see if there are reforms or alternatives, such as community treatment programs, that could ease the amount of money spent each year on overall public safety, Gov. Dennis Daugaard said.

“This is not about being hard or soft on crime. This is about being smart on crime,” Daugaard said.

South Dakota’s prison rate is about double the rates of North Dakota and Minnesota. Projections show that if nothing is done, the prison population will increase by about 25 percent to 4,500 by 2022.

That would require more than $224 million in taxpayer dollars to cover capital costs for building and operating two new prisons, one for men and one for women.

The work group, which includes representatives from the state judiciary, Legislature and governor’s office, will work with the Pew Center on the States to analyze data over the next several months.

“When I was a trial judge you had two choices: either put somebody on probation or send them to the pen. In many of those instances neither option is what I would have liked to have seen,” Chief Supreme Court Justice David Gilbertson. “If you have other alternatives, such as a drug court, alcohol court, intensive probation, that are proven to work better at less tax dollars and gives the judge those sentencing tools in addition to the pen and traditional probation, why wouldn’t you go there?”

In addition to the state’s more than 3,600 prison inmates, 7,000 people are on probation and 2,400 others are on parole, some of whom end up in prison for the first time or back in prison, Daugaard said.

“We need to understand what drives probationers into prison, what brings parolees back into prison and see if there’s a means to reducing that number in prison and getting our costs under control and still keeping public safety foremost and holding offenders accountable,” the governor said.

Jim Seward, the governor’s general counsel, said the work group will study data through October. Any possible drafting of legislation will take place in late October or November and be introduced during the next legislative session. 

via mitchellrepublic.com