John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight
A flurry of fighting broke out again Tuesday in the maximum security building on the campus of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, according to the Department of Corrections.
The violence comes less than a week after a protest over prison security and the treatment of inmates, and less than a month after the last publicly acknowledged sparring between inmates on the prison grounds in Sioux Falls.
The “series of fights” took place at the same time in “multiple sections” in the D block of Jameson Annex, DOC spokesman Michael Winder wrote in an email to South Dakota Searchlight.
No correctional staff were injured, Winder said. The state Division of Criminal investigation is leading the inquiry into the incident.
Shortly after the release of information from the DOC, Attorney General Marty Jackley said in a news release that 10 inmates were injured as a result of the violence, which began around 1 p.m. Five were stabbed, and three of them were treated at local hospitals. Two others were treated in the prison. The other injured inmates were attacked with blunt objects, fists and feet.
“Evidence suggests that the assaults are gang related and they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” said Jackley.
The Jameson Annex, built in the mid-1990s, is the area that houses the inmates dubbed most dangerous during initial intake. Jameson is also home to that initial intake area, as well as to inmates with severe mental illness and those being held for disciplinary infractions.
Some members of the state’s Project Prison Reset task force, as well as some lawmakers who aren’t on that prison construction work group, have pushed to build an additional floor onto Jameson to provide partial relief to overcrowding across the prison system.
Jackley, a work group member, mentioned a possible Jameson expansion in a television interview Tuesday.
Winder, of the DOC, sent a statement from Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko about Tuesday’s Jameson violence. She praised “the staff’s immediate, appropriate and professional response,” which she said “brought quick order to ending the fighting.”
“Our staff did recover homemade weapons that were utilized in the fights,” Wasko wrote.
The DOC Office of Inspector General is assisting with the investigation.
A similar fight broke out in Jameson a few days before the first meeting of the Project Prison Reset work group, which aims to resolve the yearslong debate over new prison construction in South Dakota.
Protests over prison conditions
As the work group pores over facility plans and consultant reports – its next meeting is set to commence Tuesday in Pierre – family members and advocates for inmates have grown increasingly frustrated with the DOC’s response to violence across the system.
On May 4, fighting broke out in East Hall, which is part of the penitentiary complex that opened in 1881. The prison work group voted earlier this month to replace that portion of the Sioux Falls campus, although the size, cost and location of the replacement are still up for debate.
About 50 people gathered outside East Hall on Friday to protest prison conditions, including Marlene Woodraska. She told South Dakota Searchlight in earlier interviews that her son R.J. committed suicide at Jameson in October, after she alleged the DOC had failed to protect him from prison gang threats.
On Friday, Woodraska told the assembled crowd about her son’s suicide but stopped abruptly, saying she wouldn’t be able to continue without crying. She and R.J.’s sister-in-law held a sign bearing R.J.’s likeness throughout the protest.
Donna German, meanwhile, said her son was injured in another recent round of prison violence.
“He is currently healing from 22 stab wounds,” German told the crowd before accusing the DOC of giving her son “Band-Aids and two little packets of bacitracin” in lieu of more serious medical care.
Protesters also spoke of overdoses, demanding that the state investigate them and address the issue of drug use inside the prison.
Last week, Jackley’s office confirmed that two deaths days apart at the prison this month – one in Jameson, one in the penitentiary – were being investigated as overdoses.
Another inmate, 20-year-old Anthony Richards, died of an overdose in early February at the Jameson Annex in Sioux Falls.
The state certificate that lists his cause of death was filed nine days ago. An autopsy concluded that he’d died from the “self-administration of drug synthetic cannabinoid 5F-ADB,” which is one formulation of a drug commonly referred to by inmates as “K2.”
Richards’ sister and grandmother told South Dakota Searchlight that as of Saturday afternoon, the state hadn’t called to inform them of the cause of death. On Wednesday, his sister said the family has yet to hear from anyone with the state about the cause of death, or about any investigation into the overdose.
Tracii Barse, organizer of Friday’s protest, told the crowd that the state needs to get its house in order before it commits to building upwards of $2 billion in prison facilities. That’s how much a recent consultant’s report suggested the state would need to spend on new prisons to deal with current overcrowding and future inmate population growth.
During the protest, Barse balked at the focus on new facilities in the face of what he called the state’s current failures.
“You guys can’t even run this one,” Barse said, pointing to East Hall.