South Dakotans should not be proud of this statistic

By Gordon Garnos

AT ISSUE: Statistics seem to always make the news, but they don't always make interesting reading. Some statistics about South Dakota is good news. Unfortunately, a recent statistic about our state's prison population was both interesting and newsy, if I may use such a word. Oh, why not. It's in the dictionary. South Dakota led the nation for having the fastest growing prison population. Do we have the mentality for just locking up the bad guys? Is there any remedy for this? Another big question is what is this statistic costing the taxpayers of South Dakota? (Full Story)