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(Continued from page 4)
• The Infant Mortality Task Force chaired by First Lady Linda Daugaard reports the distribution of 500 safe sleep kits.
• The South Dakota Workforce Initiative has increased the state's capacity to train welders for use in the state's economic development efforts. It also funded the development of Distance Learning programs at Watertown and at the minimum security men's prison at Springfield.
• Improving the availability of health care providers in rural areas has resulted in recruitment assistance in seven small communities, plus 60 more in 35 communities.
• Oil development in the state is an area where preparation is needed, said the Governor. However, he said, "if we can't pull oil of the ground, let's help North Dakota with services."
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Substance abuse remedy:
Drug and alcohol courts… or prison?
By Elizabeth "Sam" Grosz
Community News Service
• The skyrocketing cost of housing drug and alcohol offenders in the S.D. Penitentiary system and the number of repeat offenders is coming under scrutiny by the state judiciary system.
• South Dakota Supreme Court Chief Justice David Gilbertson said Jan. 9 that the state cannot continue on its current path because the spiraling costs of the penal system-at $25,000 per year to house an inmate--or there will be nothing left in the future to spend on other programs, such as education.
• Gilbertson said, as an example, in the 1980s there were 32 beds in the women's prison, where now today there are 450 females. That, he said, is a 15-fold increase in 20 years. The increase is male prisoners is similar, he added.
• Much of that increase, he said, is in non-violent crimes resulting from alcohol and drug abuse.
• Gilbertson noted that after 37 years in the criminal justice system, he is now seeing "a third generation of certain families running afoul of our criminal laws," and the choices have only been sending them to prison or back out on probation.
• However, Gilbertson said, the Northern Hills Drug Program, which was what he called "a leap of faith" five years ago, is now being used as an example of what can be accomplished statewide. In recent years, the program has been expanded to the (Continued on page 6)
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