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Feiler said.
• The department also is working on pilot program to provide community housing to parolees who need it. The $250,000 effort will place low-risk offenders in community homes where they might have a smoother adjustment to life outside prison. Feiler said they will evaluate the program after the trial run.
• Both pilot programs are still being negotiated.
• Feiler also provided updates on new evaluation programs being implemented. In one $30,000 program, the state is assessing how staff members use a standardized assessment to determine offenders' risk factors.
• "You have to be able to evaluate what a particular offender's needs are. And an evaluation isn't any good unless it's accurate," she said.
• More than $30,000 has gone toward training for corrections staff on ethics, as well as consistent, proven methods to improve efficiency in their work.
• The chair of the commission, Sen. Craig Tieszen, R-Rapid City, asked how corrections staff were dealing with the "change in philosophy" and work that came with the 2013 law.
• "As this whole thing rolled out a lot of us were thinking, 'How in the world are we going to get this all done?' We still have days," said Corrections Secretary Denny Kaemingk. "The employees, they believe in it. They're embracing it."
• Commissioners, who include legislators, judges and industry representatives, also reviewed new 2014 laws that will affect the Department of Corrections. One new law, brought to the lawmakers by the department, increases the daily amount that counties can be reimbursed by the state for holding parole violators.
• Kaemingk said the agenda was light compared to the 2013 policies.
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Dirty creek, old purse solve four-decade mystery
CARSON WALKER, Associated Press
• ELK POINT, S.D. (AP) -- Cheryl Miller and Pamella Jackson had planned to celebrate the end of the 1971 school year by gathering with classmates at a quarry along a gravel road.
• But the 17-year-old girls weren't known for frequenting parties, so when they didn't show up, other teens just assumed they had changed plans, perhaps to avoid any underage drinking or pot smoking.
• It soon became clear that the well-liked pair from the farming town of Alcester, S.D., had vanished in their Studebaker. Now the 43-year-old mystery of their disappearance has been solved, largely by the ebb and flow of a dirty creek and the con (Continued on page 19)
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