SD law enforcement industry targeting women, families

South Dakota's school to prison pipeline accelerated in 1983 when Republican Governor Bill Janklow converted the University of South Dakota at Springfield into a prison; then his people killed Gina Score in a boot camp, ended environmental protection and drove the red moocher state's descent into the hellish chemical toilet it is today.

In 2020 my home state of South Dakota was 47th in the percentage of the electorate who turned out to vote and 49th in percentage of women who voted that year. Just 59% of the electorate turned out for the General Election in 2022 and only 17% of voters turned out for the June 2024 primary election in a state that's 43rd in political engagement. 

Chiesman Center for Democracy has known about voter disgust and the hatred for women in South Dakota for at least two decades even as the state boasts the highest fertility rate in the US. Stingy Sioux Falls has even cut funding for its multicultural center and Earth hating Republicans are coming to blows over racial and ideological purity.

As of June 30, 2025 there were 1,709 children in South Dakota's child welfare system and 1,201 (70%) of them were Indigenous Americans. Today, the Lakota People's Law Project, NDN Collective and other Indigenous organizations seek foster families and homes because SD Department of Social Services employees in Rapid City flout the Indian Child Welfare Act. Since South Dakota receives some $80,000 from the federal government for each child the state seizes about 750 American Indian kids every year reaping well over a billion federal dollars since ICWA was enacted and radicalizes yet another generation. 

So, South Dakota Republicans love the police state as women are being incarcerated at the highest rates on Earth and triple the US average but the state's law enforcement industry wants that number to be even higher. In a state that sells freedom sobriety checkpoints, especially near reservation borders, mean South Dakota has the highest number of DUI arrests per capita. Between 2021 and 2025 South Dakota arrested 8,220 women for drunk driving at the second highest rate in the nation in a state where it's reported that sixty seven percent of Native American women reoffend.