Hiring of ex-inmate troubles some, offers hope to others

Last fall, Department of Corrections Secretary Denny Kaemingk was looking for someone to help mentor inmates in restrictive housing, Sioux Falls' “prison-within-a-prison” for misbehaving inmates.

He needed someone specific.

Inmates in restrictive housing are tougher and harder to reach than most prisoners, but they’re also more likely to be Native American. Last year, 62 percent of restricted inmates were Native American, often landing in Unit A through gang-related infractions.

“I wanted to know, ‘How do we reach this group of people?’” Kaemingk said.

The man he turned to, Michael Standing Soldier, had the qualifications: A master’s degree in social work, a Lakota heritage and years of experience melding traditional teachings into crime prevention and social programs both on and off the reservation.

He also had something Kaemingk knew would raise red flags: A felony rape conviction.

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“At the beginning, I think the warden had concerns and I had concerns, but those were addressed,” Kaemingk said of the former inmate, who’s been free for 23 years. “We have to manage risk.”

Some of the expected blowback came last week, when the wife of a slain correctional officer reached out to the Argus Leader to cry foul over Standing Soldier’s hire.

Lynette Johnson, widow of Officer Ron “R.J.” Johnson, doesn’t believe it’s appropriate for the DOC to offer a job to a felon on the sex offender registry, given that officers are expected to have a clean record.

Her objection to Standing Soldier’s hiring has two threads: The safety of the officers on duty and the ex-penitentiary resident’s pay rate of $20 an hour.

“It’s just insane to have an ex-felon making more money than officers who’ve been there 10 or 15 years,” Johnson said.

Kaemingk and Penitentiary Warden Darin Young both said they understand Johnson’s concerns. Young says he knows some of his officers have had their doubts, as well.

Even so, the warden said, Standing Soldier’s ability to relate to inmates and offer a positive role model make him uniquely qualified to handle the prison’s hardest cases.

“He can tell them things and reach them because he’s been through it,” Young said.

DOC: Restrictive housing program needed reform

Standing Soldier's hiring was an outgrowth of a larger policy change.

Until January of 2015, three of Unit A’s six cell blocks were referred to as “administrative segregation.” The inmates there spent 23 hours in their cells as punishment for rules infractions, and a “sentence” to administrative segregation was served out on a timed basis.

An inmate who put their hands on a correctional officer would get five years in segregation, Young said. It was meant as a deterrent, but in practice the policy meant inmates lost any real shot at rehabilitation and self-improvement.

There were no GED classes, no work or job training, no social skill building and no way for segregated inmates to earn those privileges back.

“What we had were guys who’d screw around for three and a half or four years before they’d say, ‘well, I guess I’d better shape up,’” Young said.

The system posed parole problems, too, Kaemingk said. Some inmates would sit in segregation until the last day of their sentence and walk free, going from a one-room cell to complete freedom without missing a step.

“People were coming in, but there was no process for getting them out,” Kaemingk said.

For the safety of the community, Kaemingk said, the system had to change. The prison changed the name of administrative segregation to restrictive housing and worked out a series of levels for inmates. GED classes returned, and inmates who behaved well enough could take courses in a classroom, their feet and hands are bound throughout the sessions.

Inmates can also earn communal recreation time and the right to spend time in the general population as they near release from restrictive housing.

“If they put forth the effort, follow the rules, participate in programming and act respectfully toward staff, things will improve for them,” said Jessica Cook, manager of the restricted housing unit.

Mentorship needed for hardest inmates

The program was an improvement, but something was missing, Kaemingk said.

The racial disparity in the inmate population – 30 percent Native American in a state where only 10 percent of residents are Native – was even more pronounced in restrictive housing.

Kaemingk had attended corrections conferences and heard about former inmates or gang members mentoring current inmates, and he knew that the prison’s embrace of Native American culture through Inipi ceremonies and Lakota cultural training by volunteers had helped some South Dakota offenders turn their lives around.

He knew that in part, he said, because of former inmates like Standing Soldier. Standing Soldier came to the prison in 1980, at age 21. The Pine Ridge-raised man had been given a life sentence for raping an 18-year-old woman in Pennington County.

He didn't start out a model inmate.

“In the beginning, I was very disruptive,” Standing Soldier said. “I was an undisciplined guy, in and out of the hole …. One of the things that really helped me was reflecting back on my life through my culture.”

He had mentors within the walls who gave him chances to improve, he said. In the mid-1980s, Standing Soldier requested a transfer to a prison in Wyoming. He still remembers the warden looking at his file upon his arrival, looking up at him and shaking his head.

“He said ‘what are we going to do with you,’” Standing Soldier recalls.

He began to lift weights in Wyoming. Before long, he was bench-pressing 500 pounds. The warden who’d initially doubted him asked if he might consider representing the prison in a weightlifting competition in South Dakota.

Standing Soldier knew he could try to escape to Pine Ridge during that trip, and the warden seemed to read his mind. Instead of appealing to the inmate's future, he encouraged Standing Soldier to think about others.

“He said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. If you do that, I’m going to lose my job, and I have kids,’” Standing Soldier said.

The words stuck with him. When he went to South Dakota for the tournament, his parents came to watch as he won a trophy.

Soon, he was taking college courses, encouraged by a social worker in South Dakota. When he was released on parole in 1993, he took her advice and went to the University of Sioux Falls. After a stint staying with a Sioux Falls mentor, he and his wife found a home started a family as he attended school and worked full-time as a construction worker.

He graduated with a high GPA and earned a scholarship to Washington University’s masters program for social work. By 2003, he’d earned that degree, immersed himself in Lakota teaching with Pine Ridge elders and begun to craft programs to combat drug use on the reservation using traditional Native teaching and the Western tools he'd learned in college.

That year, he was released from parole for good. His case worker saw what he’d done with his 10 years of freedom and decided he didn’t need a supervisor anymore.

“She told me I was wasting the taxpayers’ money,” he said.

Widow feels hiring of felon inappropriate

Kaemingk knew Standing Soldier’s story, and he wanted to see if his ideas could work for the gang members in Unit A. He offered him the job on a part-time basis last October, and Standing Soldier, now 58, gave up a full-time job at the Sioux Falls VA Hospital to try it out.

His program uses four traditional Lakota values: Fortitude, bravery, generosity and wisdom. He reaches out to restrictive housing inmates, both one-on-one and in the small Unit A classroom, and speaks with other inmates throughout the facility just as any other employee would.

“I want to help people heal,” Standing Soldier said. "Prison can be a monastery of pain, but it can also be a monastery of healing."

Kaemingk’s pleased with the outcome so far. Six of the 15 inmates with whom Standing Soldier works have progressed through the restrictive housing levels.

“He has a unique ability to relate to these individuals," Kaemingk said. "He is so good at working that program with them and getting them in touch with their Native culture and their faith."

Overall, the restrictive housing program’s incentives have reduced the number of inmates in segregation from 103 to 87.

That’s not what bothers Lynette Johnson. She believes in second chances, she said. What she doesn’t like is the idea that the person at the helm of the program is someone who was an inmate himself.

“I do believe people can turn around and make a better life,” she said. “I don’t have ill will against all inmates. I have problems with the way things are handled in the prison.”

Standing Soldier should be supervised by a correctional officer, she said, just as volunteers would be.

“He can do this, but he should be supervised,” she said. “He shouldn’t have keys and be able to walk around anywhere he wants.”

Lynette Johnson’s husband was murdered in 2011 by two maximum security inmates, Eric Robert and Rodney Berget, both of whom received death sentences after pleading guilty to first-degree murder. Robert was executed in 2012; Berget is still on death row.

In a lawsuit filed against the DOC after Robert’s execution, she alleged that the prison was too lenient on the two men, and that they’d manipulated the system to secure the orderly jobs that allowed them to plan and carry out the attack on her husband.

She said Kaemingk’s trust in Standing Soldier doesn’t assuage her fears. It also doesn’t make her feel better about the idea that he’s being paid more than some longtime officers, and says she’s heard from officers upset about the same issues.

She feels a job search could have turned up a candidate without such close ties to the prison.

Kaemingk said the pay rate for Standing Soldier matches his education and pointed out that there’s no specific policy barring felons from working for the DOC, although ex-felons cannot hold positions that require firearm use.

He hadn’t hired an ex-inmate before, but said he saw the value they brought to programs in other states and saw an opportunity to do what he’s always asked other state agencies and private employers to do: Hire inmates once they’re released.

“If anybody has concerns about that, they can have concerns about that,” said Kaemingk.

Young was worried at first, too, but that it was more of a knee-jerk reaction than one that stood up to scrutiny. He says he's heard of some staff discontent, but says that's inevitable when things change at the DOC.

“To go from having a life sentence to having an office at the prison is quite a transition,” Young said.

John Hult is the Reader's Watchdog reporter for Argus Leader Media. Contact him with questions and concerns at 605-331-2301, 605-370-8617, twitter.com/ArgusJHult   or  Facebook.com/ArgusReadersWatchdog.