Interview with Senator Kevin Jensen

In the first of a three-part series on South Dakota’s prison plans, Senator Kevin Jensen (District 16) tells Dave Roetman where the proposed new prison stands after the Legislature did not approve the spending. Jensen recounts the problems with the original Lincoln County site and argues the state can add the beds it needs on land it already owns in Sioux Falls, Springfield, Yankton and Rapid City. He describes how Metal Craft Industries, which employed about 30 inmates inside the Jameson Annex, was forced out. He says a maximum-security population of under 200 does not justify a new maximum-security prison, especially since the Jameson’s D-Pod was built to take a second floor with 192 more beds. He also discusses recidivism, work release, staffing and policy changes, juvenile justice, and why “the Hill is not falling down.” Topics: new state prison, Lincoln County prison site, Metal Craft Industries, Jameson Annex, maximum security beds, D-Pod expansion, state penitentiary, recidivism, work release, prison staffing, juvenile justice “The Hill is not falling down. That is the one thing people just have to understand.” - Kevin Jensen Jameson Annex - South Dakota Prisons 29 year old South Dakota inmate dies - Totally 9 this year Lincoln County will ask prison task force to be mindful of county growth plans 10 injured in prison violence days after protests over security and inmate treatment This is part 1 of a 3 part series. the upcoming Part 2 will be about solutions for overcrowding and recidivism. Full transcript About this transcript: It was machine-transcribed in-house and then edited for readability. Filler words and false starts are removed, and the meaning is unchanged. [?] marks a word or phrase we’re unsure of. Timestamps are approximate. Some passages were hard to make out in the recording and are marked [inaudible]. [00:00] Dave Roetman: This is the Making Waves podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We’re here with Senator Kevin Jensen, District 16. Welcome, Kevin. Kevin Jensen: Thank you. Thank you for visiting with me. Dave Roetman: Thanks for being on. One of the issues you’ve been working on for the past two years is the proposed prison. Could you tell us where we’re at with that and what’s going on? Kevin Jensen: I think where we’re at right now is still trying to decide if it’s supposed to be prison or multiple facilities which would meet the same purpose. The original plan from 2022 was to build a single prison in Lincoln County. And the day I heard about that. We were really looking for the announcement that the county and those of us that represent that district were really not given any heads up that they were Immediately, we scratch our heads in question. I mean it’s seven miles from the interstate. No infrastructure. There’s zero infrastructure. I mean, [inaudible]. 14 miles for sewage. I. They tried to run to Harrisburg and Harrisburg said no because you know they have their future growth plan for city and that, did not fit their growth Lincoln County. It didn’t fit the group either. And then of course the group of citizens formed the NOPE group. And filed a lawsuit, which is still hanging out there. We still have that Supreme Court decision, but the location itself just didn’t make sense going. Dave Roetman: Out in middle of nowhere it’s a gravel road that gets to it and they didn’t have public hearings about that. Kevin Jensen: There was no zoning whatsoever and that’s what the lawsuit was about that. The zoning would have allowed for public hearings and maybe that location wouldn’t have gotten far along it as it did. [inaudible] and basically destroying that whole farm place. And it’s been Basically a weed patch for the last three years while this is all going on. So where we’re at today is of course the legislature this year did not approve approved spending of the money. It you know it might have squeaked through with the money issue if the vote wouldn’t have been. Quite the way it was with one errant vote, and I won’t get into that. But anyway, and the two thirds needed to build would have never happened in either house. So that’s why we’re at the reset point now and I’ve had discussions with the governor and I’ve kind of made my, I’ve made myself clear that, in reading the executive order, that says, a prison. And we’ve had that discussion but. He said it’s palms up. It could be anything so everything’s on the table and I believe that. He says that that’s his word. I think a lot [?] of people on the commission or on the current task force though believe that they still are looking for a single prison site. That... That isn’t getting translated well to them. I think Attorney General Jackley, I think, recently the last few days or the last week or so, I think what he’s been suggesting fits into you know, the everything’s on the table kind of plan. And I think that’s where we need to be. A single level five or maximum security prison for 1500 or 1512, how many are prisoners, we can accomplish all that on current grounds if we distribute it. We’re already in Sioux Falls, yeah. Springfield, Rapid City. There’s no reason we can’t upgrade those facilities, add beds, and take advantage of the services that are being provided there. In the case of Human Services Center, we provide a lot of mental health and addiction kind of services there. In fact, for years we’ve been transporting prisoners back and forth from all the others to go get what we call restoration to competency training. So then we have the Springfield facility with the governor’s houses, the cabinet shop, the welding, the electric plumbing. Pretty much every skill anybody would need to enter the, workforce. First. Internal labor workforce and we’ve kind of really ignored that for the last three years. Of course MCI, Metal Craft Industries, being forced to leave because of the lack of workforce, they provided a lot of money for the state. I believe there was about a million dollars a year that paid for the incarceration of those employees, about 30 employees, and they were making enough money. [05:00] They were being paid I think between $17, $22 an hour. They didn’t get that money of course, but that money went to pay for their restitution, child support, any other, and for their own incarceration. So, there’s locations. Within the fences that we have already that we could build more than 1,500 beds. And again, the maximum security makes no sense to almost everybody you talk to because we just don’t run that many maximum There’s a lot of speculation as to why we would need that. Of course, I won’t get into that. I’ll let other people talk about that part. Dave Roetman: Well, I would like to clarify a couple things. First about the MCI. So they were providing jobs for the prisoners and they had to leave because they no longer had prisoners available to do these jobs? Or what’s going on? Kevin Jensen: Former warden Darin Young and I... And I met with, Terry Van Zanten was the owner of Metal Craft Industries. And they were actually their facility was actually within the fences at the in Sioux Falls. Yes, I’m sorry. So they were kind of near the Jameson Annex. And they employed 30 Inmates those inmates were all mostly anywhere from a 10-year to a life sentence inmates Those 30 because of the type of equipment that he was operating CNC machinery $100,000 pieces of equipment those people had took a lot of training right there were very skilled laborers first. Okay. Most of them were probably more in the life sentence range but this gave them something to do everyday they woke up in the morning they had and they were model prisoners according to the officers on the inside those were your model prisoners they had a purpose they were going to be there for life but this gave them a purpose and reason to exist yeah a reason to be there so what happened about a year before about three or four months before it shut down Secretary Wasko was, evidently, reviewing, what we called the CGL report and a lot of people don’t know about the CGL study that was happening at the same time as the DLR study. So the DLR was a physical building site study. The CGL study was operational study. And within that. Study they suggested that when you’re going to If you want to do training of this type, you should be training inmates that are going to be released in five years, say, because. Because you’re giving them a job skill so they can leave and have a job skill. Well And I believe according to DOC. They started these discussions in September, and I think it was 23. That they were gonna have to move those prisoners out and give him the less [?] qualified [inaudible]. We’re only gonna be there a short time. So in the meantime, he’s trying to figure out in this after that meeting in September those emails exchanges they said that they came to him in January and said you’ve got a week. And here Here’s And here’s your new staff. They took the other staff, all those 30 that were working, and they couldn’t come anymore and gave them a whole room full of guys that have never been trained on any kind of machinery or whatsoever. And he just couldn’t make it work. Yeah, so this is kind of at a point where I made the comment to the secretary that you shut them down. And he says, I didn’t shut them down, they walked away. That was at a corrections commission meeting. But what was his choice? So he couldn’t operate with unskilled labor, so yeah, he did have to walk away. The interesting thing... About that though, MCI did have a lot of tools. They had a lot of things you could consider weapons and those things. But according to the CGL report, as far as following what we call Chitting tools, that’s C-H-I-T-T-I-N-G, the tools in and out from the job site. And then what we call shadow boards, it’s peg boards with the outlines of the... Tools that are supposed to be out there at the end of the day every tool is in place. [10:00] But when we had this riot supposedly in 24 and there was blame put on MCI for not controlling [inaudible]. Well, as it turns out in this report, it said that MCI was the only facility within the whole prison that actually did a good job of maintaining their tool inventory. So, so it was kind of interesting, a lot of a lot of the other weapons and contraband and everything else that was found did not come from MCI, but it was kind of insinuated that it was partially that all these weapons were found. Dave Roetman: So... You blame the innocent. Kevin Jensen: I try not to point fingers, but... You look at certain things and you think am I the only? These questions. And obviously I’m not. I have a lot of people that are following what I do and I’ve done a couple videos and a couple interviews. Years. And. And... A lot of people that weren that weren’t paying attention are starting to pay attention. Dave Roetman: It’s good to shed light on this, now tell us a little bit about the maximum security prison prisoners. How many do we have, what kind of space do we have now, and why do we need a maximum security prison? Kevin Jensen: Well, the Jameson Annex was... Opened in 1993 with 540 maximums security beds. So a new facility. It basically it’s 30. Yeah, it’s 32 years, old. It’s still it’s a pod design which they’re looking at. Building style. [inaudible] style. The D pod, or that was added in, or opened, and I think in 2000 [?]. That’s not even 20 years old. That whole facility is modern and When I first started looking at this we had about 160 Maximum security inmates and it’s about two years ago when I first started digging into it. At the end of 2024, I think there was 142. Right now, we have 192. It fluctuates in that 150 to 180 range. That’s fair. Of course. They come and go and we have prisoner exchanges and prisoner exchanges is something a lot of people question I don’t really understand and there’s good logical reason for exchanging prisoners with other states So that’s gets a little more technical, but it’s basically to protect the inmate. Yeah, I mean you get an inmate that’s having trouble or they committed a local crime That everybody was upset with you know they’ll swap with a prisoner in North Dakota that might have kind of the same issues and it is mostly to protect the inmate themselves. Dave Roetman: Understood. So less than 200? Kevin Jensen: Less than 200. 192 I think was the end of so. Dave Roetman: So we literally have two and a half three times more space for maximum security prisoners than we actually use. Kevin Jensen: Exactly plus in all of this. Yes. Okay. We started digging and I started talking to some contractors and people that were involved with the D-Pod and it is confirmed that the D-Pod that was opened in 2006 is physically built for a second for a second floor. The footings are way overbuilt for the second floor. The mechanical room, boiler room were all built. To handle the extra 192 beds by adding a second floor. And there was actually a space left that would be, could be used to not for the inmates to use, but for the service elevator. Because everybody says, well, you shouldn’t use an elevator. Obviously transporting inmates, but that, or moving them around, but that’s not what it would have been for. So, we’ve learned that over a year ago. Of course, DOC [?], there was a pretty strong pushback and an absolute denial that you could even add to that. And then we got the Banner [?] engineering [inaudible] that yes it was designed for a second floor and then we got pushed back that well, the FAA will never approve it because it’s you know we can’t build at the end of that runway build up well that was actually proven wrong too that was approved at the time they approved the original blueprints for We built up to 47 feet. So, and recently now they. DOC has come around and has had to admit that yes, we could have a, so if we 192 more maximum security beds in that pod. To me, I just I cannot see any possibility of needing 700. 100. Maximum security cells at the Jameson are filling them, I should say. [15:00] So why would we need to build anymore? I think what we really need to be concentrating on is our recidivism rate and our re-making sure when these prisoners get out that we’re following them and have the ability to I think they We did start a new program called SAFER, S A F E R, and that’s to look at kind of the job skills of the people that are already in there with the plan to help them when they get out. [inaudible] task force meeting how many of those people have been released now, and none? They have 1400, but we haven’t actually been keeping track of those people. You know, I keep bringing up places like Texas. What they do now, they went from 40% down to about 20 or 21%. But what they do is they actually, almost every inmate has something to do, a job, they’re on work release, or they put them to work within the system, so that when they get out, they have a skill, they have something they can do. Yeah. Dave Roetman: They’ve been. And Yeah, we’ve been doing exactly the opposite. Kevin Jensen: Shutting down workers [?]. Yep, [inaudible], but it just doesn’t happen. If you go from doing nothing, your propensity is to continue to do nothing. Dave Roetman: So... Idle hands. Kevin Jensen: I think that’s... When we look at our recidivism rate... Over 40% and 3% come back. The other thing I think we need to look at is that most of those are what we call or they call technical parole violations. I’m not even exactly sure what that is or what it entails or I know if somebody commits another crime, obviously. That’s is a parole violation. They are going to be charged and everything. Recently Representative Greg Jamison and I were appointed to co-chair the re-entry summer study. And we’ve had one meeting and we’re working on gathering some data together to put together to this new summer study before, we’re probably going to try and meet by the end of the month for the first meeting. There’ll be three meetings. But some of the things that we’re looking at and finding out started digging into how we calculate our recidivism. And asking questions like, is there a national standard? Does every state look at it the same way? And what I’m finding out is, no. Every state kind of does it in their own way. When we get compared to North Dakota, what are we comparing? We don’t really know. So, I guess I use the example. If somebody’s out on parole and their neighbor sees them having a beer, is that a technique? I don’t know. Does that put him back in? So those are the things I don’t know first, but I think work. The job skills, the job training, work release, a number that I heard recently was at the Jameson, we have about 200 inmates that qualify for work release. But what I understand is there’s only actually nine of those out on work release [?]. To get answers is not easy because sometimes you get the response well for security reasons we can’t say. I think, it’s a lot of it’s because it’s on lockdown. And it’s really hard to have a lot down on and everybody when I’m when you’re releasing some when they’re coming and they’re going, of course. The recent news in the last few days is extremely disturbing with the drug ring and always there’s always been drugs and those things inside the prison we know that but why? As recently as it just, we have nine deaths this year, and some of them are overdoses, and it’s really hard to comprehend how somebody can be in their cell. I’ll be honest, I worked down at the jail, Minnehaha County Jail [?], back in the 80s and we did bed checks every hour. Nobody could have laid there all night long unresponsive. I really don’t know what the policies are. What I do know from talking to officers is that there’s been so many policy changes in the last three years that even the officers that work there don’t feel safe working there anymore. So I really have to question. What’s the cause of all this. The question I’m asking right now and I hate, I don’t like to point fingers but I have to on this one is if we have a secretary that’s been here for three years and according to everybody I talked to the conditions in there are worse now than anybody can remember and it’s not getting better. So are we focusing, are we so intent on focusing on building a new prison that we’re ignoring trying to figure out policy changes or doing something internally to relieve all this? [20:00] Yes, everybody’s going to tell you, yeah, it’s overcrowded, but it’s still been overcrowded for a long time. Overcrowding is not a new issue. So we’re really trying to figure out You know, if it was me, and of course I would never be in that position, but if it was me, I’d roll up my sleeves and I’d say, okay, what can we do? We have a violence issue, we have a gang issue, we have a serious gang issue. Are we separating those gangs? Are we identifying them or are we letting the gangs all co-mingle in the same wings, in the same pods at the same time? It’s all policy things. And I think some of those things could relieve some of the pressures. Of course, it’s easy to talk from the outside. It’s easy for me to say that. But I still think it’s doable, especially after talking to a dozen officers and former wardens. Dave Roetman: It seems to me that the facilities are not the problem. Kevin Jensen: I’ve said this often, buildings don’t kill people, but policy can. Yeah, the buildings are overcrowded. I will say this, when they say the hill is falling down, that’s just flat. I can’t use the word lie, but it’s not true. We put over $30 million into that building in the last 13 years [?]. Air conditioning, windows, tuck pointing, new cells, new doors, new security systems. Yes, it is a linear style prison. But if you look at around the country at all of the federal facilities most of the older federal facilities that are still fully functional are lineal style prisons not the pod systems there’s nothing wrong with the pod system but when we Yeah, it is a sell as a sell once they’re getting them back and forth. Yeah, it’s a little more difficult Maybe I don’t know so what do we look at? Newer nursing home facilities or new hospital designs and they’re built more in that pod style. I don’t believe it’s any easier to move people around because you tend to have longer distances to move them more obstacles to move through. And when I looked at that prison design that was proposed for Lincoln County, I think I can’t remember if it was seven or nine different or pods, but... There’s open space between them. So if somebody’s in the fifth pod down the row, how do they get there? Do you have to walk through the other pods? Is there underground? Underground tunnel would be the worst way. It looked like there was a lot of sidewalks, but you know, in January, that’s probably not the easiest way to move people around two or three times a day. Anyway, so I think the linear style still works. The problem with the hill is there’s twice as many inmates in there as it was built for. And that’s why I keep coming back to if we added the 192 beds on the D-Pod and the DLR study suggested a 300 bed minimum or medium center between the Jameson and the Hill and there is space there. There is plenty of space there to build a 300 bed unit. And just for clarity. Dave Roetman: Building a medium security prison or addition would not be nearly as expensive as a maximum security prison. Kevin Jensen: No, it would not go up a lot quicker because you can use cinder blocks. In fact, you could probably build it more as a medium or work release center because we already have the maximum security right there at the Jameson right you. You wouldn’t have to Mac you could put maybe put some you know, low level. Medium security. There’s a lot of different levels of security that the inmates get screen for and then they you know, they monitor order. Where they should be placed as far as levels of security. But you could build that 300 bed unit there and it would not be nearly as expensive. So we put that 300 bed unit there. So what you could do is build that first. You could probably build that in under two years. Take 392 of them from the D-Pod move them in there temporarily. While you built the addition on the D-Pod, which might take another year and a half, everything is there except the walls and building up because all your infrastructure is already there. So, now you and We’re 400 beds We need 400 beds to relieve the hill. You have 492 just by adding those two things. And again, we haven’t put a shovel in the ground outside the current fence of the prison, Sioux Falls prison. Dave Roetman: Speculating, you could, theoretically, go to Springfield, which apparently wants an expansion, has probably put a minimum security or a minimum security facility. Kevin Jensen: In fact, if you look at the plans I’ve laid out there, I used the DLR for the basis, because it made sense. It was a good study. You can have a 200 bed minimum security at the HSC at the Yankton facility, more than enough room. One of the reasons the hard time staffing it down there is inconsistency in contracts. [25:00] I’ll get into the weeds a little bit just on that because a lot of those services are provided through our through DOC employees, but also contracting with places like Lewis and Clark Mental Health. The problem is those contracts go through the Department of Social Services, DSS. And those contracts come and go every year. In fact, they’re [inaudible]. Somebody with the level of experience that it would take to work there. Probably not going to work on a year-to-year basis. We should scrap those and hire people to work full-time. There’s probably enough in Yankton to cover another hundred beds. People want consistency and clear for their future. They want to be able to have a job and keep it for a couple three years or longer. Yeah, most people with an educated type or degree type of, like whether they’re mental health counselors, addiction counselors, nurses, those kinds of things. They’re going to want... A long term employment. Exactly. Right. Now when we look down at Springfield, there’s a huge opportunity there. It really should... We’ll be limiting it to around a thousand. We got twelve hundred in there right now. But what’s really troubling is that facility is not meant for the higher level securities, but we have what I’ve been told by people who work there is we’ll probably have two hundred gang members in there. Dave Roetman: They shouldn’t be there. That’s a very minimum security system. Kevin Jensen: Yeah, and that’s if you remember last fall, I believe it was, there was some semi- rioting and going on down there. What the families are telling me or they’re hearing from their loved ones that are incarcerated down there is that the gangs have kind of split the territory and making it difficult for everybody. And that’s kind of what prompted some of the window breaking and all that other things. Now you could build. At minimum a medium security 300 bed unit there. But if you built a minimum security 300 bed unit and a medium security 300 bed unit, you could still separate those and you could still build upon the industrial training that we do down there. At the new prison, I know they talked about partnering with STI to come in and do these training programs, so there’s a couple problems with that. How are we going to pay? Staff said that they would have grants to pay for that. Well, we all know grants come and go. Especially with those if they’re federal grants, you know what’s going to happen there. So if we start the programs that way, are we going to be able to keep them? And if we don’t, are we going to pay for them ourselves, are we Springfield is the South Dakota housing, actually took over the, a number of years ago took over the training and everything for the building of the governor’s houses. They train the sheetrockers, the plumbers, the electricians, everything you need. They do the training. We also have And I think it’s Trail King [?], at Mitchell, brings in welding equipment. They bring in the physical welders and they train welders there. And most of them, when they get released are offered a job at Trail King [?]. Well, some of those go then to Marman [?] or other places because a welder can make $60, $70 an hour now if you’re any good. And those are good skills. One of the things I keep saying about focusing on job training and following them outside the walls once they’re released, making sure that they stay with a job, if it costs us $35,000 a year to incarcerate a person. And they leave and they come back. We’re still paying $35,000. If they leave and they have a good job. They’re probably making $35,000 or more in the community, which is a $70,000 swing. We save $35,000. They make $35,000 and reinvest into the community. And I think there was one time I heard for every dollar you spend, it gets recirculated seven times. So when we look at putting that $35,000 back into the community, we’re actually expanding our economic development. So there’s just... There needs to be more focus on trying to find work for these people. Now, we’re South Dakota. We have nine reservations. We have unfortunately a disproportionate number of Native Americans. A lot of them, when they leave, they do go back to the reservations. Conditions. I’m not saying that there are the biggest number of our recidivism. I really don’t have a handle on that number, but there’s not much for jobs out there. But I know a lot of their families either move to Sioux Falls or they’re here a lot visiting with their loved ones in there. [30:00] So when they do get out, they maintain that family connection. So, I know there’s a couple of groups I’ve been working with talking with family members and I get a lot of letters from inmates. And I get letters from corrections officers too, telling me their ideas on how things could be better. But maintaining that connection to the community, getting them out, those are all key in having them not come back. I think it’s former Speaker Haugaard estimated that if we could get a recidivism rate down to about 20%, we would probably open up 250 cells, 250 beds. I can’t say cells and beds interchangeably because a cell holds more than one inmate. But so we just call them. So we could probably free up more beds if we could free up our recidivism in half. So those are things I think we really, really need to focus on. But it seems like right now what we’re focused on is incarceration and locking down and putting... Putting the thumbscrews to everybody. Dave Roetman: And building big, huge prisons that we don’t need. That we don’t need. Because we need some space, but we don’t need maximum security space. Kevin Jensen: Not everybody in there is a nice person. Of course but we’re treating them all apparently we’re treating them all the same now if somebody’s in there on a year and a half sentence for ingestion we’ve got them in there with murderers and rapists and of course separation is difficult when you’re overcrowded, I get that. I mean, I’m not naive to that. But I think we could have facilities we could be building we could also put a 200 bed minimum or what we call it they call them community work centers now I guess we used to call them minimum security but we could put a 200 bed unit in Rapid City. So if we do, I mean, just in what I’ve said right now We’ve added our 1500 beds and we could be building all of those And it would not take four years to build those. Dave Roetman: It would not take as long to build. It would be a lot less expensive to build each facility per bed. Kevin Jensen: And it would solve the problem very, very quickly. And you dispersed the workforce. You’re not going to have to hire an additional 400 people to work in a prison in the middle of a county. When you’re going to try and keep the other one open at the same time. We have a hard time maintaining staff levels right now. In fact, I think early on one of the policy changes was to call yourself fully staffed, you reduce the number of staff you had. To what you need for your needs, now you can say we’re fully staffed. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. But I have officers on the inside tell me that initially where there were four. Officers were required on a post at a time they reduced it to two. And a lot of cases were required two, they reduced it to one. And in two of those cases, two of those officers, I won’t mention their names, one of them ended up in a lawsuit and two of those inmates. Being convicted again of attempted murder on one of those guards. I call them guards. That’s what we used to call them. They’re officers, I guess we call them. Dave Roetman: And old school. Yeah, me too. Kevin Jensen: But when you think about it... Yeah, it’s gonna make it much more dangerous. If there’s five or six guys sitting around and they look at two of them, it’s gonna be a lot more difficult than the start if there’s only one of them there. Another thing that I heard that was kind of disturbing was the shower area. Okay, yes, it’s down in. It’s down in the lower unit. Of course, it’s an old shower unit. It’s going to have some rust. The paint might peel a little bit. Of course, we’re not maintaining it. We’re not fixing anything that they’re complaining about. But what’s disturbing is, well, it’s so dangerous, because when they’re down there, there’s only one guard there. Well... I’m not going to make any apologies for this statement. That’s stupid because that’s a policy. You could put four in there if you wanted to, and then it would be less dangerous. So to make a claim that it’s dangerous because you don’t have enough staff down there, well, that’s a policy issue, pure and simple. That’s a bad argument. Dave Roetman: We could go on this for a couple of hours if we wanted to. But this is an upshot. We have more than sufficient maximum security prison space. We don’t what we really need in prison. And we could resolve this by building smaller facilities in places we already have land and fences. Kevin Jensen: Exactly. And I didn’t mention earlier on, I was on Corrections Commission for six years. And I was on the Juvenile Justice Reform Oversight Council for six years. When we talk about the pipeline to the prison. And we could go on, we could talk a couple hours about this one too, is how we handle our juveniles right now. [35:00] Kids that were stealing cars and doing other things when they were 16 years old and only getting a $100 fine and informal probation do that when they’re 19 years old. Now they’re probably facing a prison sentence for doing exactly the same thing because we didn’t hold as accountable as we used to. And that goes back to 2015, Senate Bill 73, the change there. So, in fact, I’m pretty sure I said that I had a When we were trying to repeal parts of that bill, I’m pretty sure in the Judiciary Committee, I stated that if we don’t do something to hold these kids accountable within 10 years, we’re going to be building a new prison. I said that in 2016. And here we are. Years later and that’s what we’re talking about. Now I’m not saying that it’s all because of these kids because crime is on anytime you have a population increase the crime tends to grow at a faster rate than the [inaudible]. Your crime might be going by 9% just because there’s more opportunities for criminals. And those kinds of growths tend to bring in criminals especially if they see us as being a little weak on crime I know it covered a lot of ground there. Dave Roetman: You sure did. A lot of different issues. Well, final thoughts. Kevin Jensen: Sure. Final thoughts are I’m really hoping that the task force, I was not on the first task force and I am not on this task force and sometimes I think I maybe have a bigger megaphone outside the task force and what I’m really trying to provide is alternative ideas because I think looking at the original task force, the DLR study really should be given a lot more focus than the new study. In fact, probably 10 pages of that new study actually just regurgitated what the original study said with varying answers. But the thing is, I think we really need to look at... We already own the property. Everywhere I’ve talked about, infrastructure is already there. And services. Yeah, and the hill is not falling down. I mean, that’s the one thing people just have to understand. Yes, it’s an old building. It should be on the historic register. It should be. It’s in. That building has been maintained. They don’t like it, but that’s not a reason to get rid of something. I mean, look how many other granite buildings we have around Sioux Falls that have been remodeled and are wonderful facilities now. The granite walls do not make it a bad place. Dave Roetman: Kevin. Thank you very much. Kevin Jensen: Yep, you’re welcome. Dave Roetman: My name is Dave Roetman. We’ve been here with the Kevin Jensen, Senator from District 16. This has been the Making Waves Podcast. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit daveroetman.substack.com