“It is the most expensive building project for Corrections that I have ever come across, ever read about, and I couldn’t even imagine.” - Doug Weber, former Chief Warden and Director of Adult Corrections of South Dakota
boondoggle
[ boon-dog-uhl, -daw-guhl ]
noun
a wasteful and worthless project undertaken for political, corporate, or personal gain, typically a government project funded by taxpayers:
Is the proposed 1500 bed prison in Lincoln County a boondoggle?
Transcript. This transcript was machine generated and may contain errors:
Dave Roetman:
“This is the Making Waves podcast, my name is Dave Roetman. We're here with Doug Weber, a former chief warden and director of adult corrections of South Dakota. Welcome.”
Doug Weber:
“Thank you.”
Dave Roetman:
“You were the former director of adult corrections, so you have a lot of experience in prison system and the correction system.
Doug Weber:
“I do. Like you stated, my name is Doug Weber. I was born and raised in South Dakota. I went to work for the Department of Corrections in 1981.
Worked my way up through the ranks, did a lot of different jobs in the prison system. Governor Janklow promoted me to warden from the associate warden job, which I had been doing for five years in 1996. I worked the warden job for approximately three years and then Janklow promoted me to chief warden to supervise all of the adult corrections in the state of South Dakota, which I did until I retired in 2013.
So all total I worked for corrections for 32 years as warden or chief administrator for 16 years, 16 years.
Dave Roetman:
“So it's safe to say that you are, we're experienced in this matter.
Doug Weber:
“Yes, sir.
I worked all aspects of the jobs that are there. Worked most of my time at that penitentiary, the granite building on the hill, as people refer to it, the hill, and also was involved in the building of the Jamieson Annex and warden and oversaw the building and supervision of Janicet.
Dave Roetman:
“There is a bill in the legislature right now, a proposal to build a prison in Lincoln County just south of Harrisburg and north of Canton, and this is a very, it's a brand new complex, a 1,500 bed complex. Do you think that an expansion of the prison infrastructure is necessary?”
Doug Weber:
“I do not agree with the building of that prison at that location. I think it's the wrong place. We have no need for a 1,512 bed men's facility in Lincoln County. Wrong prison, wrong location in my opinion.”
Dave Roetman:
“Now, this is supposed to be a maximum security prison?”
Doug Weber:
“That's what Secretary Wasko has been saying for over a year now. Just recently, she changed her description from 1,500 bed maximum security to a 1,500 bed max, a 1,500 bed mixed custody facility to include maximum, medium, and then a very small portion or a small number of minimum security inmates for upkeep of the prison campus.
Dave Roetman:
“So, what are some of the alternatives to building something in Lincoln County?”
Doug Weber:
“What I think needs to happen, in my opinion, from my experience, is instead of building a massive complex 10 to 15 miles south of Sioux Falls on ag land and replacing and or mothballing the penitentiary in Sioux Falls, which still has a very long useful life, in my opinion, would be to look south towards the Mike Jurfee State Prison in Bon Homme County near Yankton. That prison, too, was built in 1881. That was built as a South Dakota Teachers College.
That prison was built as a college with college dorms, not as a prison, as was the hill of the prison in Sioux Falls, which originally was built as a prison, was brought quarry stone from the Falls Park area up on top of the hill, and was built with quartzite, concrete, and steel. Springfield remains very vulnerable in its age and very susceptible, I believe, to natural weather disasters and also man-made disasters. Whereas the penitentiary on top of the hill, there's not a tornado that's going to blow that down, and there's been huge investments made in that building for fire suppression, smoke evacuation, and much, much more to make that a very safe and viable facility for many, many years and even decades to come.
Dave Roetman:
“One of the arguments is that the penitentiary in Sioux Falls at the top of the hill there is old and obsolete and needs to be replaced. Is that true?”
Doug Weber:
“That is not true. There are numerous linear-style penitentiaries, and I've toured a number of them in my career, that are, I don't want to say in much worse shape, but not as well kept up as ours, and where the investments haven't been made like have been made in ours.
But are still in service, and as we speak today, there are still many linear-style penitentiaries in operation in the United States, both in the Federal Bureau of Prison Systems and in different State Departments of Corrections. So it is not obsolete. Since 2013, according to Wasko, there's been over 30 million dollars in investments made in that penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
I would wager in the last 50 years, there's been over a hundred million dollars invested in that penitentiary in Sioux Falls. In upgrades to include modern electronic locking devices, where I can push a button in a control room and lock or unlock a door. I could release inmates en masse if I need to.
I can ensure inmates are locked in their cells by looking at a board in a control room. I can put out fires by fire evac systems. I can evacuate smoke.
I can control large crowds of inmates. I can monitor inmates' movements on high-definition camera systems. There have been major improvements in the HVAC systems in the building.
There have been major improvements made in the vehicle accesses to that penitentiary to allow for large trucks to enter and exit the facility, to include the largest firefighting equipment that the Sioux Falls Fire Department has, for example, to enter if they need to that facility. So no, that facility has been modernized and there has been a huge investment in that facility. I might add in 2021, Governor Noem spent millions to air-condition that penitentiary as one of the most recent improvements to that penitentiary.”
Dave Roetman:
“I gather that the facilities in Sioux Falls could be expanded if we need more space. And you can also modernize other facilities that are already in existence.
Doug Weber:
“There is room for growth in Sioux Falls.”
“The D-Pod, which is one of the main pods at the Jamison Annex complex, was designed and money was spent to add a second floor, another building if you would. If you took the D-Pod section of the Jamison Annex and were to build another one and literally set it on top of the existing D-Pod, you could add another 192 beds to that complex. Maximum security beds.
That's there and available if they chose to use that option. Tim Reich and I, Tim Reich was at Secular Corrections at the time. I was a chief warden at the time, designed it that way.
There's also another 28 acres that's just across the diversion channel from Jamison, almost a stone's throw. It could be utilized to build a smaller, specialized prison, whether it be for mental health, special needs, orientation in incoming inmates, receiving unit. You could do something special like that, much smaller, maybe a 200 bed facility on that 28 acres.
So there are options right there on that complex, if you chose to use those.
Dave Roetman:
“So there are options that are more modest in scope and more economical that would resolve the problems in the penitentiary system.
Doug Weber:
“In the Sioux Falls area there are.
However, I would still advocate for a larger facility down south to replace the Mike Durfee State Prison. I still think that that would be something that's necessary, but you could build that for much, much less than $825 million that's on the table now, which price will increase dramatically by the time the DOT has to spend the money to build highways and replace bridges and do the drainage things that they will need to do and build 14 miles of sewer pipeline to connect the facility to the Lenox Wastewater Treatment Facility and other things that are coming down the line.
For example, there's a prison being built in Nebraska by Lincoln right now. That's a 1,512-bed facility, same size as what Wasko is proposing to build in Lincoln County. Similar footprint, almost identical acreage that she's proposing in Lincoln County for $350 million, a third of the cost of what she's proposing in Lincoln County. I can't understand how that can happen, and she has not explained that.
She said Thursday, in her appropriations hearing, she knows the Secretary of Nebraska well. She also said that she has heard that that project has been placed on hold because they maybe had originally lowballed it purposely in order to get that project started, but now all of a sudden the prices are starting to increase, so the legislature in Nebraska has slowed things or stopped things.
I went home, it looked at the Nebraska legislative website. On Wednesday of this week, the day before Wasko did her Thursday meeting, the Nebraska legislature passed a bill naming their new prison. They named their new prison in law Wednesday before Wasco said that they had ceased operation on that prison. It makes no sense to me that they would name a prison that they had stopped construction on, so I'm not so sure how accurate her story is.
But let's go back to my original point. Why can they build that prison for one-third the cost of what she's proposing we do it for in South Dakota? One time somebody said it's because of square footage. Well, then why don't we copy their square footage plan? One time she said it's because some of those cells may be four-man cells, and why don't we build some of those four-man cells? Why should we build a prison that's three times the cost of what they're doing 200 miles to our south? Can somebody explain that to the South Dakota legislature and to the citizens of South Dakota that are going to foot this bill ultimately?”
Dave Roetman:
“It seems like a boondoggle, and there are alternative things you can do, like expanding things in Yankton, expanding things in Sioux Falls that would resolve the whole issue.
Can you give us an idea? I don't want to put you on the spot here. Can you give us an idea of how much it might cost to expand facilities in Sioux Falls and Yankton and resolve the issue as it compares to building an entirely new prison?”
Doug Weber:
“You know, it's dangerous to swag this and throw out numbers, but if you just look at, for example, what I said Nebraska is doing, and they're building a mixed-custody 1,512-bed facility, 300 acres, for $350 million. What I propose, what I would propose for Yankton or Bonhomme or somewhere in that area I think that you could build a 1,250 or 1,500-bed facility on medium security or level you know, two, three, four, somewhere in that area for much less, for less than the 350 million of Nebraska spending, far less than what she's proposing up here.
And then even if you wanted to do an additional smaller specialized prison in Sioux Falls, you could. You could then reduce the count at that penitentiary so that even that's more manageable and easier to operate. I operated that penitentiary when the count was 700, when it was as full as you could possibly make it.
I've also operated that penitentiary when it was at 400. Really, really easier, easy and pleasant to manage. So I've seen both extremes and it's much easier to manage when it's in that 400 range.
So you could reduce the count of that penitentiary and make it much more easier to manage and be much more selective on the inmates that you house in that penitentiary. So the penitentiary is a very, very viable correctional facility. It should be utilized and there's been a ton of money invested in it and why not continue to utilize it?
Dave Roetman:
“Let me get a grasp on kind of ongoing costs. It's obviously more expensive to house a maximum security inmate as opposed to a medium or low security.”
Doug Weber:
“For sure.”
Dave Roetman:
“How many maximum security inmates do we have in South Dakota?”
Doug Weber:
“It's a great question.
We have less than 200 today.
The current facilities at Jamison can handle more than 200. As of today, we have 576 maximum security beds in our system available.”
Dave Roetman:
“So if we did expand things, we can just use the Jamison Annex for maximum security prisoners and have a low and medium security facilities elsewhere that are less expensive.”
Doug Weber:
“Absolutely.
Dave Roetman:
That would resolve the whole issue”
Doug Weber:
“Absolutely. And I think that's the main reason Secretary Wasko stopped saying we need a 1,500 bed of maximum security prison, like she said, for almost a year because she realized that was not a great argument. Having 576 maximum maximum security beds already available in Sioux Falls and having only 6% or less of our population actually classifies maximum security inmates.”
Dave Roetman:
“Sounds to me like this proposed penitentiary in Lincoln is a Cadillac of prisons, of penitentiaries, where they're kind of spending is unnecessarily for a high security prison, maximum security prison, that we don't need.”
Doug Weber:
“It is the most expensive building project for corrections that I ever come across, ever read about, and I couldn't even ever have imagined.”
Dave Roetman:
“Doug, thank you very much for being with us on this podcast. This has been very informative. I really appreciate your time.”
Doug Weber:
“Thanks for giving me the opportunity.
I just want to have an opportunity to talk to as many people as I can and just tell them what I know and from my perspective what I believe is happening and what I believe will be better options for the citizens and the folks that come after us, our kids and their kids. They're gonna have to pay for this ultimately”
Dave Roetman:
“Thank you.”
Doug Weber:
“You're welcome.”
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