South Dakota will hire more parole officers, expand monitoring to nights and weekends, and make it easier to send people on parole back to prison, Gov. Larry Rhoden announced this week.
Five parole officers will be assigned to an enhanced compliance unit, Rhoden announced in a Thursday news release, and five new officers will be hired to backfill those positions.
The Department of Corrections will also “enhance the severity of sanctions” for people on parole who commit certain misdemeanor offenses, including driving under the influence, or simple assault and weapons violations. The Board of Pardons and Paroles, meanwhile, will “process revocations” more quickly and hold revocation hearings more frequently.
Some changes are just starting, but adjustments to revocation policy began a week ago, the release said, and the state has “nearly doubled” the number of revocations since.
Shooting sparks criticism and action
Law enforcement has criticized the state’s parole policies for years, before Rhoden’s term in office began in 2025.
The governor’s announcement came in the wake of a shooting, the second in as many years to injure a Sioux Falls police officer. The officer in Sioux Falls was ambushed and shot on Monday by someone on state-supervised parole, according to the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office, which is leading the investigation. The officer is in stable condition.
The man accused of shooting the officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2022, with three years suspended, for drug possession and grand theft. He was released in late 2024, and police issued an “attempt to locate” order for him in the run-up to his encounter with police earlier this week. He’s now charged with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and aggravated assault, among other charges.
Thirteen months ago, another person on parole allegedly shot and wounded another officer in Sioux Falls before leading law enforcement on a multi-county pursuit that ended with still more shots fired at state troopers. The man was convicted of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer in Union County last month; his case in Sioux Falls is pending.
On Tuesday, Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead told reporters at a news conference that he was angry about continued violence and a spate of criminal incidents linked to people on parole. It’s an issue he and other Sioux Falls law enforcement leaders have addressed repeatedly in recent years, as state officials wrestled with debates on new prisons, rehabilitation and repeat offense rates.
The 400-bed jail in Sioux Falls held 112 people who are on parole on Tuesday, Milstead said. Nine have been charged with murder or manslaughter, and dozens have been charged for offenses like rape, aggravated assault, robbery, firearms offenses or abuse of a minor.
You can read the full article at South Dakota Searchlight.