The South Dakota State Penitentiary is a

state prison This is a list of U.S. state prisons (2010) (not including federal prisons or county jails in the United States or prisons in U.S. territories): * Alabama * Alaska * Arizona * Arkansas * California * Colorado * Connecticut * Delaware ...

located in

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large porti ...

's largest city,

Sioux Falls Sioux Falls () is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 130th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into Lincoln County to the south, which continues up t ...

. The building's industry shop makes several things for the state, including

woodwork Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinet making (cabinetry and furniture), wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. History Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first mater ...

and

license plates A vehicle registration plate, also known as a number plate (British English), license plate (American English), or licence plate (Canadian English), is a metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identificat ...

. The State Penitentiary also houses South Dakota's death row for men and the state's

execution chamber An execution chamber, or death chamber, is a room or chamber in which capital punishment is carried out. Execution chambers are almost always inside the walls of a maximum-security prison, although not always at the same prison where the death r ...

History

The

State Penitentiary is located in northern

, occupying approximately thirty acres. First constructed as a territorial prison in 1881, it became the South Dakota State Penitentiary when South Dakota was granted statehood in 1889. Though a large portion of the original buildings remain, numerous structural changes have occurred over the years. The main Penitentiary facility contains three housing units. The G. Norton Jameson Annex began housing inmates in February 1993. The Jameson Annex contains three housing units within a secure perimeter and a minimum security unit known as Unit C, which is located outside the perimeter fence. Inmate employment within the Penitentiary falls into two basic categories; institutional support and prison industries. Institutional support includes those employed in food service, as clerks for various departments, as cell orderlies and those working in maintenance. Prison Industries consists of upholstery, printing, sign, decal, license plates, carpentry, book bindery, machine shop, Braille unit, garments and data entry. All but the garment and data entry work is done at the Penitentiary. Most of the work is done for government agencies. Inmates are offered literacy, Adult Basic Education and GED classes. The penitentiary was designed by Wallace L. Dow and constructed in 1882. The warden’s residence was completed in 1884. In the 1890s, prisoners quarried stone to build a wall to enclose the prison yard. In 1881, Richard Pettigrew lobbied for and succeeded in getting a federal appropriation to construct the jail in Sioux Falls, which can be seen from the

Big Sioux River The Big Sioux River is a tributary of the Missouri River in eastern South Dakota and northwestern Iowa in the United States. It flows generally southwardly for ,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataTh ...

. On July 11, 2007, the first post-''Gregg'' execution took place at the penitentiary. 25-year-old Elijah Page was executed via lethal injection for the

murder of Chester Poage Chester Allan Poage (July 4, 1980 – March 13, 2000) was an American man who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by three men in Spearfish, South Dakota, on March 13, 2000. Elijah Page, Briley Piper, and Darrell Hoadley were convicted of the to ...

. It was the first execution carried out in South Dakota in over sixty years. On April 12, 2011, Correctional Officer Ronald "R.J." Johnson was bludgeoned to death by two inmates who were trying to escape. Both inmates were arrested within the confines of the prison grounds. They were subsequently sentenced to death. A third convict was sentenced to life imprisonment for providing materials in the killing. The first convict, Eric Donald Robert, was executed successfully on October 16, 2012, using South Dakota's new single-drug lethal injection method. The second convict, Rodney Scott Berget, was executed on October 29, 2018.

Notable prisoners

* Elijah Page – convicted of the

; executed by lethal injection on July 11, 2007. * Charles Russell Rhines – convicted of the murder of Donnivan Schaffer; executed by lethal injection on November 4, 2019. * Briley Piper – convicted of the

; only person on death row in South Dakota. * Darrell Hoadley – convicted of the

; serving a life sentence. * William Kunnecke – a German-American serial killer. Serving a sentence of life imprisonment, he escaped on September 3, 1919, and was never captured.

References

External links

* South Dakota Department of Corrections * https://web.archive.org/web/20100630235559/http://doc.sd.gov/adult/facilities/sdsp.aspx * http://wikimapia.org/1223914/South-Dakota-State-Penitentiary * https://web.archive.org/web/20100618121237/http://doc.sd.gov/images/pen3_001.jpg * http://www.hopehaveninternationalministries.org/ClassLibrary/Page/Images/Data/261.jpg * http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/images/restore_justice/South%20Dakota%20State%20Penitentiary.jpg {{Authority control Prisons in South Dakota Buildings and structures in Sioux Falls, South Dakota Execution sites in the United States 1881 establishments in Dakota Territory