A crowd listens to a presentation on June 17, 2025, at Mitchell Technical College about the possibility of constructing a state prison near Mitchell. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
On June 3 in Pierre, a gaggle of Mitchell city leaders delivered an unambiguous message to the state’s prison construction work group.
The city council, mayor, county commission, sheriff and various economic development officials were all in agreement: a patch of land south of Mitchell could easily host a new prison for 1,500 or more inmates, and their community would reap the benefits.
That wall of official support has since cracked under the weight of fierce public opposition.
A sea of people in red T-shirts – red for “stop,” like a stoplight – have greeted city council members and county commissioners during the public comment portions of recent meetings in Mitchell.
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The Davison County sheriff withdrew his support within days. Mitchell’s mayor pulled back shortly thereafter. Both men said their backing was provisional and subject to change by the will of the community.
About 50 of the people on hand for an informational session Tuesday night at Mitchell Technical College wore red T-shirts.
To hear Dwight and Barbara Stadler of Mitchell tell it, support for a prison in their town had never extended beyond leadership offices. Neither of them wore red T-shirts on Tuesday, but both are firmly in the anti-prison camp.
“They didn’t tell us about it until after the fact,” Barbara Stadler said of Mitchell’s initial pitch to the Project Prison Reset task force.
The opposition in Mitchell mirrors what state officials already faced in rural Lincoln County – and are beginning to face in Worthing – as they try to find space for a men’s prison. The facility would ease overcrowding in the correctional system and replace the oldest parts of the Sioux Falls penitentiary, a facility that dates to the late 1800s.
Locations of the potential prison locations that remain in play, plus the location of the original rural Lincoln County site that’s been ruled out.
Other sites see pushback
The selection of land for a new men’s prison south of Harrisburg in late 2023 spurred the creation of a nonprofit organization whose activism contributed first to that $825 million project’s legislative defeat in February, then to the removal earlier this month of the land set aside for it from the list of possible sites for any future prison.
Neighbors Opposed to Prison Expansion (NOPE) also sued the state in hopes of forcing it to abide by local zoning rules. A Lincoln County judge rejected that argument; the state Supreme Court is considering an appeal, though its ruling would now matter for future state-local disputes, not the dispute over that specific prison site.
No one in Mitchell has sued – the state hasn’t decided to do more than study the land as an option – but community members have launched a Facebook group called “NO Davison County,” whose page is populated with skeptical dialogue about the prison idea.
The group had 1,200 members as of Wednesday afternoon.
Prison group narrows options
That Mitchell became a focal point at all is an outgrowth of a choice made at the June 3 meeting in Pierre.
The Project Prison Reset group, convened by Gov. Larry Rhoden to find solutions for overcrowding after the initial prison plan’s legislative loss, left four locations on the table at the end of its meeting that day, culled from a list of more than a dozen: Mitchell, a separate Lincoln County site in Worthing, Springfield and Sioux Falls.
Open process and publicity draw wide range of offers for state prison site
The latter two options would involve building on land the state Department of Corrections already owns, even though no tract of that land would be large enough for a prison the size of the one shot down by lawmakers in February. The request for proposals sent in April sought potential sites with more than 100 acres.
In Springfield, the state would need to build within the footprint of Mike Durfee State Prison, which is less than 70 acres altogether. In Sioux Falls, it could mean building another floor onto the penitentiary complex’s Jameson Annex, on land adjacent to the penitentiary (less than 30 acres), or on land west of town currently used to house juvenile offenders (68 acres).
In addition to its vote to narrow down possible prison sites, the group opted to cap the price of any new prison at $600 million – far less than the $2 billion a consulting group called Arrington Watkins had suggested the state would need to spend on new facilities to address overcrowding over the next decade.
Members of the NOPE group were celebratory on social media over the removal of the initial Lincoln County site from consideration. Since then, the group has shifted the focus of its activism to Worthing, where task force members are considering a site off Interstate 29 that’s not far from the original Lincoln County site.
The NOPE group discussed the Worthing site at a meeting in Canton on Tuesday. Today, the group will lead an informational session at Worthing Elementary School.
Seven days ago, Worthing Mayor Crystal Jacobson came out against a prison near her city.
Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken said in 2023 that he’d prefer a new prison be built outside the city.
He was more measured at the first Project Prison Reset meeting in early April. At that point, TenHaken testified that he wasn’t going to advocate “for a specific location,” but predicted that the task force would face the kind of pushback that’s since appeared from the neighbors to any site large enough to hold a new prison.
“No matter where you decide, you’re going to have a fight on your hands,” TenHaken said.
Less fight – but little space – in Springfield
The second project prison reset meeting was in Springfield, and included testimony from residents who told the task force that the prison was a positive force for the town.
Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen and Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko both took time at the end of the meeting to assure residents that the state’s commitment to the Mike Durfee facility is solid.
South Dakota corrections work group formally backs need for new prison
The mayor of Springfield, Scott Kostal, was on hand for Tuesday’s meeting in Mitchell and told residents not to fear a prison. The medium security facility in his town, once a university, has been a good neighbor, Kostal said, hasn’t forced the city to pay more for public safety or infrastructure, and hasn’t affected property values.
Kostal said he’s been surprised at how much his town’s property is worth.
“If there’s a problem with property values going down because of the prison, will somebody please call the Bon Homme County Assessor’s Office and let them know?” Kostal said Tuesday.
Springfield can’t address the state’s full slate of needs though, Kostal told South Dakota Searchlight in a Wednesday interview. There isn’t enough space on the Durfee campus to build a 1,500 or 1,700-bed facility, which is what the most recent consultant’s report suggests is needed to address overcrowding.
There is some green space inside the fence and a parking lot that could hold a few hundred more inmates, according to a previous consultant’s report, but Kostal says anything more substantial would put vocational and educational programming at risk.
“The only way you could remotely do that would be to remove those buildings or eliminate those programs,” Kostal said.
