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SDPB Radio Coverage of the South Dakota Legislature. See all coverage and find links to audio and video streams live from the Capitol at www.sdpb.org/statehouse

Released Inmates Get Ride Home, Pocket Money

By Victoria Wicks

When inmates leave the South Dakota State Penitentiary, they are offered transportation to their home town and some “gate money,” or pocket money. But under one chapter of state law, that offer is good only once.

Deputy Secretary of Corrections Laurie Feiler testified before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday that parole statutes in a different chapter require that parolees receive clothing and transportation upon release without limitation. The department initiated the current bill to bring the laws into alignment.

Feiler says if transportation is not offered, released inmates end up staying in the community where the corrections facility is located, rather than returning to their home towns and families. She says some inmates who flat-time, or just serve their sentence without being paroled, are released without supervision. But Feiler says ideally, inmates are paroled and have assistance with their needs when reintegrating with a community.

“If at all possible, we like people to go out on parole, because then we have a parole agent and we have the case management and the resources that can—and the hammer, frankly—that can go with trying to get the basic things set up in the community. When a person flats out, we’ll try to help them with that stuff, but there’s not that hammer anymore,” Feiler says.

The deputy secretary says it’s good public policy to provide transportation and pocket money for inmates who have no money in their account or can’t get a ride from friends or family.

House Judiciary members voted to recommend passage of the bill.