The South Dakota State Penitentiary, pictured on March 27, 2024. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation is heading up an inquiry into two inmate deaths that occurred last week on the campus of the South Dakota State Penitentiary.
The deaths, as well as a host of security breakdowns in recent months, are among the motivating factors for a planned Friday protest outside the facility in Sioux Falls.
DCI spokesman Tony Mangan confirmed Monday that the agency is working with the Department of Corrections’ Office of Internal Affairs to look into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of two men housed in Sioux Falls.
The first, 39-year-old Jason Garreau, was found unresponsive in his cell on May 15, according to a news release sent by the DOC the following day.
Fight breaks out at penitentiary one month after similar violence that injured officer
A similar news release came two days later, on Sunday, and also used the verbiage “found unresponsive in his cell,” in reference to the death of 24-year-old Joshua Arrow.
Garreau lived in the penitentiary, an 1881 structure whose age, safety and crowded conditions have caused three years of discussion among state lawmakers on a replacement.
Arrow lived in the Jameson Annex, a building erected in the 1990s to house maximum-security inmates, those in disciplinary segregation and those with mental health needs.
Both facilities have seen outbursts of violence since March. There were two incidents just days before a work group studying prison construction walked through for a visit in early April. The first involved a female correctional officer assaulted at the penitentiary, the second an outbreak of violence between multiple inmates at Jameson that led to injuries and a facility lockdown.
The penitentiary once again saw a flare-up of fighting in early May. On that violence, the DOC only offered that there were no “life-threatening” injuries or injuries to officers.
On May 7, a correctional officer was assaulted at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield, a medium security prison that played host to two days of wide-scale fighting last summer.
After a tour of Southeast Technical College in Sioux Falls on May 7, South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden said he has “full confidence” in Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko to manage the security issues within the DOC.
Wasko, he said, has “done a pretty good job of managing that situation, given the circumstances that she’s inherited and the conditions and the overcrowding.”
On Friday, a group led by a former inmate named Tracii Barse plans to protest conditions at the penitentiary from 4 to 6 p.m. in Sioux Falls. The poster for the event says the group intends to “peacefully and respectfully” protest “the treatment the inmates are enduring from admins and guards.”
“We will be speaking in honor and memory of the deaths that have recently happened inside the prison system,” the poster reads.
Barse said one of the primary goals is to push the DOC to respond to the concerns of family members with more honesty and transparency. While lawmakers discuss the possibility of expensive new prison construction projects, Barse said, inmates are injured, sick and dying, and family members – and the public – are left to wonder about the circumstances for days, weeks or longer.
“The people have the right to know what’s going on,” Barse said.
Nicole Gednalske, a spokeswoman for the DOC, told South Dakota Searchlight in an emailed statement that the agency is “awaiting autopsy results at this time” on the two recent deaths.
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