Last-minute prison revelations were shocking only for their timing and source

Rep. Jon Hansen, R-Dell Rapids, speaks on the state House floor on Jan. 16, 2024. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

Less than 24 hours before South Dakota lawmakers met last week to consider building a prison, one of them disseminated “shocking new revelations” in a press release.

“I have confirmed,” the press release said, “that the South Dakota Department of Corrections has been using your tax dollars to provide transgender cross-sex hormones to convicted criminals in prison.”

The release went on to accuse the department of “hiding” a policy that includes a treatment committee and payments to an “East Coast college professor” for gender dysphoria services.

The last-minute sabotage attempt didn’t come from a rogue lawmaker on the fringes of the 105-member Legislature. It came from Dell Rapids Republican Jon Hansen, the speaker of the state House of Representatives.

South Dakota lawmakers approve $650 million prison construction project in Sioux Falls

The late onset of Hansen’s sudden interest in prison health care was peculiar, to say the least. He could’ve dug up his information and shared his claims at any time during the last several years while he was participating in prison debates.

Hansen has been a state representative since before the planning to replace the 144-year-old penitentiary started gaining momentum in 2021, and he was a member of Gov. Larry Rhoden’s Project Prison Reset task force that met four times this year from April to July.

Hansen voted “no” during the past couple of years on bills to authorize planning, site preparation and funding for a men’s prison at a controversial site in rural Lincoln County. But when the prison task force came up with a new plan and voted in July to recommend a 1,500-bed prison at a maximum cost of $650 million in Sioux Falls, Hansen voted yes with all other task force members in attendance.

Earlier, between the task force’s first and second meetings in April, Hansen announced his 2026 campaign for governor with his running mate, House Speaker Pro Tempore Karla Lems, R-Canton.

Gov. Rhoden, who’s made a penitentiary replacement one of his top priorities, hasn’t declared himself a candidate to keep his job yet. He’s expected to run, which would pit him against Hansen and at least two other declared candidates for the Republican nomination: U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson and Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden. That’s why the political stakes were high last week when legislators traveled, at Rhoden’s invitation, to the Capitol in Pierre for a special session to consider the prison plan.

The bill’s legislative journey began in a committee that approved it by a vote of 13-2. Nobody was surprised when Hansen and Lems cast the two “no” votes, after Hansen’s “shocking new revelations” of the prior day. The bill then passed the Senate and House with little mention of those revelations, and Rhoden immediately signed the legislation into law.

Although Hansen’s surprise attack failed, some of his claims were true. The state does in fact pay an expert from Baltimore to consult with a committee and evaluate incarcerated people who seek gender dysphoria treatment. The expert’s last three annual contracts are viewable in the state’s online financial portal, OpenSD, including the current one for up to $48,353.76 worth of services this year. The state is required to offer those services, because courts have upheld inmates’ rights to gender-affirming care.

Those aren’t shocking revelations.

The shock is in the revelation that a legislative leader seeking the state’s top elected office tried, at the 11th hour, to derail an important public policy debate by drumming up fear about transgender people.

The hope is in the realization that it didn’t work.