PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — South Dakota Department of Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko on Tuesday addressed responses to both the staff assault at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls in March and fights among inmates at the Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield in July.
“Other than calling, as we have a contract to do, calling for ambulance services at the Durfee disturbance, we had no outside law enforcement, no firefighters, no state patrol,” Wasko said at the state capitol during a meeting of a joint committee on appropriations. “We do not call on local assets to come into our institutions, and we didn’t in March with the incident at the state prison.”
The secretary bluntly summarized safety in front of lawmakers.
“Our prisons are not safe,” Wasko said. “They’re not safe. They’re not constructed with modern-day environments. They’re not constructed with modern-day equipment, and they’re not staffed according to the National Institute of Corrections staffing methodology.”
Wasko says the new men’s facility planned for rural Lincoln County will “stabilize” the overall DOC system of facilities. Statewide, there were only 78 security staff vacancies as of late June; last October, there were nearly double that number.
“We are now at 78, so I wanted to say thank you for that,” Democratic Rep. Linda Duba of Sioux Falls said during the meeting. “We have a long way to go, and we have to keep working on it.”
Following Wasko’s remarks, KELOLAND’s Dan Santella sought an interview with her. She said permission to do that must come from Ian Fury, chief of communications to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. Fury responded to the ensuing request to interview Wasko with the following statement: “DOC declined the interview, citing ongoing litigation and security concerns.”
