While we wait for House State Affairs to pick a day to hear House Bill 1183, Rep. Steve Hickey's effort to end South Dakota's use of the death penalty, the Legislative Research Council has weighed in with its analysis of…
Posts tagged as “prison”
The South Dakota Legislature already has three mostly futile bills before it questioning or delaying the implementation of the Common Core curriculum standards. Senate Bill 64 in particular prohibits the state Board of Education from implementing Common Core or any…
Jessica Giard reports that Florida-based Youth Services International is closing the Chamberlain Academy, a youth detention and treatment facility in Chamberlain. This private facility, licensed by the state Department of Social Services, has housed an average of 22 juveniles over…
Governor Dennis Daugaard's FY2015 budget proposal includes a boost to this fiscal year's corrections budget of $4 million. The Governor says we need to pump $4 million more into our prisons to fix a "correctional healthcare shortfall" arising from "significant…
Senate Bill 70, Governor Dennis Daugaard's omnibus bill to reform South Dakota's burgeoning corrections system, received strong approval from the full Senate yesterday. Only two senators voted no on vague concerns about growing government. Some of my crankier Republican friends…
South Dakota has been on a prison bender during the past couple decades, incarcerating people at a faster rate than surrounding states even though our crime rate is about the same as our neighbors'. Governor Daugaard wants to address that…
South Dakota has the same crime rate as surrounding states but a higher incarceration rate. Betty Olson and Scott Craig probably think the solution is to hand out more guns. The American Civil Liberties Union and South Dakota Families First…
The Institute for Economics and Peace issues its United States Peace Index, ranking the fifty states on their "peacefulness." IEP bases its USPI on five indicators: "the number of homicides, number of violent crimes, the incarceration rate, number of police…