Security questions after prison unrest met with silence by officials

Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)

It’s been nearly three weeks since an outbreak of violence in Springfield on a former university campus now used as a medium-security prison.

The state Department of Corrections has yet to address any questions on the incident. The agency has declined to tell the public how and why the fights began, the number of inmates involved, the methods used to quell the violence and any punishments or security protocol updates in the aftermath. 

It’s the last piece that most concerns the people who live in the former college dormitories of Mike Durfee State Prison.

On the day after the July 9-10 fighting began, inmates yelled at reporters from their cell windows, saying they felt unsafe. The DOC said six inmates suffered non-life threatening injuries, but the inmates said that number was deflated by at least half.

Multiple inmates told South Dakota Searchlight that the cell doors at the medium-security Springfield prison are still more like the dorm room doors they used to be than modern prison cells. Doors can be locked from the inside, they say, making it possible for attackers to be locked inside rooms with victims. Inmates have also claimed that understaffing left officers unable to do much but let inmates tussle early on in the fighting.

Inmates and a representative with the state employees’ lobbying group say more high- or formerly high-security inmates from the penitentiary in Sioux Falls have been transferred to Springfield in recent months.

Inmate Winston Brakeall said the recent fighting included inmates beating other inmates with pool balls and cues, pop machines knocked over to block entryways, bloodied floors and scarred faces.

“There’s one guy down the hall, his face just looks like road rash,” Brakeall said over the phone. “He just got pummeled.”

His biggest concern was about the alleged transfer of inmates from Sioux Falls to Springfield. Brakeall has been imprisoned at Durfee for nearly 20 years, and says he can’t recall anything as severe as what happened earlier this month. 

He attributes much of it to the transfers. Durfee used to be a place where inmates came “after they could show they had their s— together,” Brakeall said. 

“Now it’s just another wing of The Hill,” he said, referring to the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

Eric Ollila of the South Dakota State Employees’ Organization said he’s heard stories of higher-security inmates being transferred to Durfee over the past few months, in addition to ongoing concerns about staffing and officer security.

A 2022 report commissioned by the state to assess the corrections system’s security and facility needs did not mention transfers but did note some problems in Springfield, some of which were tied to its layout as a college campus, as well as staffing and security protocols.

At the time of the review, the report said, inmates would be patted down after work, but not again after walking across the campus to their housing units. 

Durfee was among the corrections facilities dinged for “inefficient facility layouts” that “present security challenges.”

Michael Winder, in response to an email asking about a series of claims by inmates at Springfield – the second email to ask those questions – said “the claims that you cite are inaccurate.”

“I would encourage you to refer to the information that DOC has previously provided on the offender fights,” he wrote.

Information that is security sensitive or tied to an ongoing investigation, he wrote, will not be released. 

Last week, the agency declined to release information requested by Searchlight under the state’s open records law on the number of inmates at Springfield who’d been classified as high security within six months of their transfer to the medium-security facility.

Ian Fury, spokesman for Gov. Kristi Noem, has yet to reply to questions on the incident.

Earlier incidents of unrest broke out on two nights in March at the penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Court documents filed by Attorney General Marty Jackley’s office in criminal cases against 11 inmates offer some details on how those events played out. 

The DOC has released little on how the agency has moved to address any underlying security issues that may have contributed to the incidents, for either the Sioux Falls or Springfield facilities.