4/28/16

Cops' lives suck: South Dakota falling down on prison industry oversight

Draconian drug laws have effectively reduced the number of hires in South Dakota's mass incarceration businesses.
The six prisons in the South Dakota Department of Corrections are all feeling the pinch of staff shortages and high turnover of 18 to 20 percent. The Department of Corrections tells us there are reduced staffing levels at community work centers on the overnight shift because they are watching minimum-security inmates. [KELO teevee]
More than 5 million children in America are separated from a parent because of a prison sentence. Eight percent of South Dakota's kids or about 17,000 children are affected by the state's repressive law enforcement industry.
Scot Spencer, the Casey Foundation's associate director for advocacy and influence, said that can have long-term negative effects. "Having a parent incarcerated can be a lifelong experience," he said. "It has the same magnitude of impact as abuse, domestic violence and divorce." [Public News Service]
Conceding South Dakota's bleak history of incarcerating adolescents and young adults Marty Jackley's School to Prison Pipeline has gotten the shaft.

South Dakota's attorney general's office has a history of being more like a KGB unit, according to David Newquist at the Northern Valley Beacon. Jackley receives campaign contributions from the very people he is obligated to oversee.

Todd Epp has called Pierre a Reichstag.

Exacerbating prison population and hopelessness, personal income in South Dakota has plummeted under Republican Governor Denny Daugaard according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. The state is addicted to gambling creating staggering homelessness and despair.

Shootings in Sioux Falls are directly related to video lootery and residents are telling the press they don't want to live there anymore. School lockdowns are reaching epidemic levels in a state that grew up with open doors and optimism about the state's future is being dashed.

Even Kmart is leaving South Dakota as Main Streets in Yankton and Huron are being emptied by Walmart peddling poisonous plastic crap imported from China.

Instead of helping South Dakota's least fortunate, the state's Republican congressional delegation has moved to privatize hospitals in Indian Country enriching campaign donors like the Sanford and Rapid City Regional health care oligopolies.

Crony capitalists have been siphoning money from programs meant to fund Native education until an alleged murder/suicide exposed the corruption.

As hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota residents endure Policing for Profit and civil forfeiture so the sitting governor can crow about his leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills.

Attorney General Marty Jackley is not only a partisan twerp he's as dirty as the police forces he oversees. Jackley says he believes conflict of interest laws are too lax yet he is hoarding information on Bendagate that could put his political party in the legal cross hairs. He's struggling to raise enough campaign cash to run for governor.

Another Republican threatening to run for governor is sleaze ball, Mark Mickelson. A pale shadow of his father, the late Governor George Mickelson, Mark believes prosperity is more important than environmental protection and that Medicaid expansion for the state's least fortunate is inconsistent with South Dakota values.

There is no money for South Dakota education in medical or industrial cannabis and no video lootery revenue goes to the state's tribes. Cannabis prohibition is not protecting South Dakota kids any more than video lootery is.

This election year earth hater don Juan Thune is slithering back to the center hissing bipartisanism whilst getting squeezed by the pythons that brung him but his Democratic rival, Jay Williams is being revolutionary by adopting the kurtz template. Maybe Williams should be running for the state legislature instead.

The Tribal Marijuana Sovereignty Act has been introduced in the US House of Representatives. The five-page bill includes a section authorizing Indian Health Service medical professionals to make recommendations to their patients with regard to cannabis.

Despite lies from SDGOP, video lootery, payday loan sharks, domestic violence and homelessness are inextricably linked putting children at risk to more catastrophic consequences far more often than has happened in states that have legalized or lessened penalties for casual use of cannabis.

If people have forgotten cops are human, it's their own fault for allowing bad cops, systematic abuses and racism to go unchecked.

Cops' lives suck. Little wonder they abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives.

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