MPR: South Dakota Prison Reform

South Dakota Puts Prisoners to Work
By Cara Hetland
October 6, 1998

It's not uncommon to see prison inmates at South Dakota's state hospitals doing laundry, inmates making repairs at state buildings, or cleaning up disasters and fighting fires. Every day 900 South Dakota prison inmates leave their cells and go to work. It's a program Governor Bill Janklow believes in and says saves the state money. Some say it's nothing short of slave labor and South Dakotans should be outraged.

THERE ARE COUNTLESS THEORIES on the best way to punish a criminal. Some say lock them up and throw away the key, and others say counseling and training are the path to reform. South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow doesn't buy any of that.

Janklow: I think most people that go to prison are losers. Like I tell them, you can't even succeed at crime. Even at crime you're a failure, you got caught, and you got convicted. And most people aren't any better when they come out of prison then when they went into prison. Now having said that, I think there's dignity in work.

Janklow says teaching prisoners job skills, personal hygiene, and job responsibility will help reduce the rate of repeat offenders and help inmates better themselves. So Bill Janklow developed projects that put inmates to work. At Springfield's medium-security prison, inmates are building houses and daycare centers to transport to small towns. Inmates do laundry at state hospitals, office work at the capitol, and ground-keeping at state office buildings.

But the largest project calls for inmates to wire all South Dakota schools for interconnectivity and Internet access. The state will spend $15 million on what would have been a $100 million project, and will do it in two years. Janklow says students in the most remote towns will have the same tools as students in the larger cities. The school districts provide meals and housing for the inmates, and the state pays the inmates $3 a day plus the wage of a qualified electrician to supervise each crew. The state also picks up the tab for supplies.

At this elementary school in Brandon, South Dakota, a crew of seven inmates and one supervisor pull wire to accommodate eight computers in each classroom. Inmate Dave Huvland says the project is complex.

Huvland: Putting up the raceway, they go in terminating the ends, all the electrical work, pipe - bending pipe, figuring your circuits, pulling them, making sure they work. Huvland worked construction and warehouse stocking before he was sentenced to the penitentiary. He says he volunteered for this project as a way to leave the penitentiary during the day. He says it's now his goal to become a certified electrician. Huvland is eligible for parole next year. Only non-violent offenders qualify for the wiring crew. Tommy Oakley gets out in March. He says he'll try to get a job with an electrician but isn't convinced this experience is enough.

Huvland: I mean, it depends on the situation, I guess. If people will take it, or take it for what it is, or just regard and say, "Hey, they were just in prison doing work, it really don't matter what experience they gained."

Paul Ewing: On-the-job training will give you hands on, that's for sure. But it does not give you the theory and the background to not only keep yourself safe, but the public safe, because they're working in public schools and if they don't have the proper education ... I don't want them working on my schools.

Paul Ewing is with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local 176 in Joliet, Illinois. He says union electricians require a five year apprenticeship. Ewing equates what Governor Janklow is doing with prison inmates to slave labor. He says training inmates doesn't matter. He's taking jobs away from law-abiding citizens by paying below-market wages.

Ewing: As far as making a living wage for my family, I don't want to compete against someone who can outbid me because he has slave labor working for him. I can't compete against that, nobody can compete against that. Now you may have very low unemployment right now, and that's good, but still ... It's still a matter of it may be fiscally responsible, but is it morally responsible?

Governor Janklow says he's heard all the complaints.

Janklow: I have to make a decision, and I know they're not popular: is government an employer of people or a provider of service? If it's an employer of people, then we just go out and hire everybody, and then we tax ourselves to death to pay for it. But if it's a provider of service, then my real responsibility is: don't take people's money in taxes unless I have to, run government at cheap as I can, as efficiently, effective, and productive as I can, and use whatever resources I have to hold down the cost.

Janklow admits he's getting work done on the cheap - it's something he's proud of. But it's too soon to tell whether Governor Bill Janklow's prison-labor program will have another benefit: helping to permanently rehabilitate prisoners.

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