COLUMN: Time is Now to Invest in Safety
Senator Crabtree Supports New Men’s Penitentiary Plan
PIERRE–The Legislature has a fundamental duty to protect our residents. As a State Senator, I took an oath to protect our people, and today, we have the right plan in front of us to build a new men’s prison. We have an obligation to protect our residents from criminal offenders, and we have an obligation to maintain and invest in corrections and rehabilitation. We simply cannot achieve either objective if we do not have space from our inmates.
Looking at how other states deal with criminal justice and public safety, there are stark differences between places like South Dakota, California and Illinois. Other states have created a revolving door of incarceration because of overcrowding and a lack of rehabilitation programming, and some have even decriminalized criminal activity or decreased penalties. South Dakota has not done that, but if the Legislature had rejected this proposal, we would have begun our path toward devaluing public safety like California. I think that would be a mistake.
Today’s vote is at a time when we have seen President Trump crack down on crime in cities to make America safe again. It is clear that Americans, including South Dakotans, value their safety. Citizens are rising up in states where their leaders have devalued public safety. They are crying out for more arrests, more rehabilitation, and stronger penalties.
It has been proven that our 144 year old prison needs to be replaced. There simply isn’t enough room and I don’t want any excuses for violent criminals to get softer sentences or be released early. The tragic stabbing of Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina by a man who had been arrested 14 times and had 3 felony convictions is a recent example of how weak on crime policies put the public in danger.
The prison proposal presented to the Legislature by the Prison Reset Task Force earned my support because it moves our state forward by addressing a clear and present challenge, and it did so in a way that is good for our taxpayers. Those who voted to reject the proposal, voted to move us backwards by ignoring a problem, making South Dakota less safe, and creating a need to spend even more dollars for the facility needs of the state.
The proposed facility in Sioux Falls will be the best space in our state’s history to reform, educate and rehabilitate South Dakota’s inmates. I want these men–these inmates–to pay their debt to society for the crimes, but I also want them to emerge as better people. The men God envisioned them to be as good fathers and good neighbors; men who will use their skills to contribute to society as part of the workforce. We can’t do any of that without this new prison.
The voters of South Dakota send Legislators to Pierre to tackle the tough issues and make the big decisions. Today’s vote was one of those moments. For me, it was an obvious choice to invest in a new facility that law enforcement endorses while we continue to address reforms in the Department of Corrections and continue to evolve and improve how to work with inmates to become valuable members of our society when their sentences end. My parents taught me that it’s easy to do the right thing. I’m teaching my boys the same. Today’s vote was an easy vote because it’s a vote to invest in people, in safety and in an urgent need for South Dakota.
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good to see both Larry and Casey have gotten the messaging right: it’s a public safety issue.
Stick to that
They are working together and both using Redstone. I would hope their messages align.
If this thing doesn’t become Rhoden’s Folly (who knows what the odds are of that?), it could be the best thing ever to happen to his campaign. Will Larry ask Republican primary voters to not change horses in the middle of the stream let him finish the job?
I don’t know if the largest spending bill in the history of South Dakota is a good talking point.
Purely hypothetical question for context.
Granted, our current leadership are saints, but if somehow by the grace of satan a global corporate mafia takes over our law enforcement systems and starts throwing people in prison based on loyalty, vengeance, or psychopathy .. is that something that falls within the realm of something we want to be protected from? 😀
Asking for a fiend.
More interesting questions in good faith.
Are there people on staff with current elected legislature capable of vetting the new design in detail, down to the database and software source code used to run everything?
Additionally, we are representative government granted, but I’m still very curious to test the efficacy and quality of materials that were just used to influence this vote.
I’m free next Monday.
Were all legislators given access to the same set of information, legally obtained and distributed, with ample time and opportunity to contest?
“National security”
“Public Safety”
“To disappear”
As we bumble with applying technology to create long-term good, we create risk through the range and nature of information used, collected, and shared between agencies.
What databases might be migrated to this facility? From where? Why? Containing what?
Our general lack of understanding of technology is a soft target that needs hardened to ensure these prisons aren’t simply attack fronts for foreign entities using software, exploiting a blind spot, to gain a reconnaissance foothold with access to potentially any other South Dakota information system with lesser clearances.
So, as we take the money, what federal contracting might be obligated in terms of information sharing that could compromise our long-term security and general well-being?
Sincerely,
John
Sanctimonious much?
Dear anonymous coward, own your words.
I don’t think “sanctimonious” means what you think it means.
Lots of us are anonymous for very good reasons. Maybe Anon 7:21 had a malaprop. Not everyone is sufficiently politically adept to employ the correct term, “word salad.”
I think in this case, “sanctimonious” might be a euphemism for “high as a kite.”
I don’t know what you’re smoking, John, but that is some serious shit you got in your pipe.
Devil’s Salad lol