SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A few minutes into a conversation in the associate warden’s office at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, Kellie Wasko received a phone call.

“It’s the governor’s office,” the state secretary of corrections said, squinting into her cellphone. She had left her reading glasses in the car.

She leapt to the other side of the room and answered the phone, her face expanding into a wide smile as she got the news that her persistent lobbying for increased correctional officer pay had been approved , increasing starting pay to $23.50 and raises for more senior officers up to $28.

Wasko says the funding for the raises this year will come from savings from vacant positions. Still, she says she was in contact with several state legislators ahead of the decision, since they may have to approve an increase in operating expenses next year to cover the salaries.

After returning to her seat and drafting her contribution to the imminent press release, she breathed a sigh of relief, a short celebration for one of the first public victories for the department since she took the reins in early March.

“I have goosebumps,” Wasko said, looking up and down her arms.

The raise, along with an increase in starting pay from under $18 to $20 on July 1, is one of many ways Wasko plans to alter the course of a corrections department embroiled in scandal and criticism for months. While the pay increase begins to address staffing, which she called her "No. 1 priority," her sights are now set on revamped training in modern corrections and improving workplace morale.

Over the previous few hours, Wasko had taken Forum News Service on a tour of the penitentiary and the accompanying Jameson Annex. She told each officer along the way that help was on the way and she thanked them for hanging on through a tumultuous stretch for the department. Still, without a firm timeline for delivering on the promise, many officers appeared to take the pledge with a grain of salt.

“We can’t make it until next July,” one officer told her during the tour, referring to the usual start date of raises approved by the state Legislature.

While the increased pay announced hours later could begin to address the staffing shortage, the raise is not a magic bullet.

For Wasko, the work is just beginning.

During the July 26 meeting of the task force on the Incarceration Construction Fund, a summer study commissioned by the Legislature to make recommendations on potential improvements to the penal infrastructure in the state, Sen. David Johnson, a Republican from Rapid City, asked Wasko to describe what, in her opinion, is the function of prisons in South Dakota.

“The number of offenders that are coming back to our prisons is larger than the number of new convictions… Were we correcting anything? No, we were making it worse,” Wasko said in the middle of a nearly seven-minute answer charting a broad history of correctional philosophy in America. “We need a physical plant that's not only going to embrace modern correction so that they can be housed and moved and let out of their cells, but also introduce meaningful treatment to them and truly be a department of corrections.”

That response, and Wasko’s detailed list of priorities offered to the task force throughout the meeting, had an impact on several legislators.

“I'm more impressed with her every time I hear her,” Linda Duba, a Democratic state representative from Sioux Falls, told Forum News Service in an interview after the meeting. “She has a tremendous grasp of the key issues that we are dealing with here in South Dakota.”

Wasko originally went to school for nursing, and worked as a nurse in an intensive care unit in Idaho before making the switch to corrections, initially in the realm of health services.

Eventually, she worked her way up through the leadership ranks in Colorado, including stints as an associate warden, warden and, from 2013 to 2019, served as executive director of the state’s corrections department.

“The previous leaders [in South Dakota] were lawyers, detectives and sheriffs,” Wasko said during the tour. “It’s not to say they didn’t have their strengths, but I know what happens day to day, I know what these officers need to be successful.”

Wasko’s expertise is in the intersection of health services, restrictive housing and mental illness. In Colorado, she and others in leadership reported a marked reduction in the use of “administrative segregation,” better known in popular parlance as solitary confinement, along with an increase in programming and transition work for inmates with mental illness.

She first came in contact with South Dakota when she served as a consultant for a 2015 effort to decrease the use of “restrictive housing,” as it’s known in the state.

Walking through the Jameson Annex, where the bulk of the changes took place, Wasko and Associate Warden Troy Ponto went through several of the improvements, from more specific goal-setting with inmates to a secure room that allows for programming in small groups outside the cell.

The changes appeared to work, as the study claims “restrictive housing population decreased 18 percent from 103 people in September 2014 ... to 85 a year later.” According to a survey by Yale Law School in 2019, that number had dropped to 55.

After briefly moving to the private sector as part of Colorado-based Correctional Health Partners , Wasko received a call in January gauging her interest in leading South Dakota’s prison system; less than two months later, she was in charge.

Department-wide issues made public over the past year being addressed

In May of last year, an anonymous open letter circulated around the corrections department discussing issues of morale and retention among security officers made headlines for a lack of effective training and equipment, nepotism in promotions and an overall workplace environment that led to high turnover, empty positions and low morale.

That letter, along with other scandals buttressed by reporting from KELO’s Angela Kennecke , DakotaNewsNow’s Beth Warden and former Argus Leader reporter Joe Sneve , led to widespread firings and a shakeup of department leadership.

“I’ve been here for five months,” Wasko said. “These issues weren’t created in five months.”

Despite various reports discussing continued difficulties in recent months, Wasko chalked many of the issues up to a department that had yet to adjust to staffing shortages, a problem she says they have begun to solve.

Wasko confirmed that staffing shortages, which current numbers put at 82 unfilled security officer positions at the state penitentiary campus, have affected inmate programming and, during night shifts, have left some surveillance pods unmanned, though she said there has always been at least one person on the floor. Other facilities across the state, like the Women’s Prison in Pierre, have even more acute shortages.

In July, Wasko said 10 staff members, with an average of 7.2 years of experience, left the force — officers who “had the majority of the experience in the department.”

During the tour, one officer told Wasko that 17 officers were leaving at the end of the month, although she was not aware of that figure.

“I hope not,” she said.

Outside of the staffing improvements that the department is hoping will materialize out of the newly announced raises, Wasko has begun addressing other issues raised by whistleblowers in the press and staff members who have contacted her directly.

On the claims of nepotism in hiring, Wasko says any hiring decision involving an extended or immediate family member “has to be approved by me and me only.”

In addition to taking their message to the press, some corrections officers went directly to the Legislature during a meeting with several state senators on the evening of Aug. 17 in Sioux Falls. The meeting mainly focused on putting staffing shortages into context and establishing a line of communication between those on the ground and key appropriators.

“I applaud them for coming forward, and it was very obvious that they are dedicated employees. They love what they're doing,” Maggie Smith, a Republican senator from Sioux Falls who attended the meeting, told Forum News Service in an interview on Aug. 18. “I think it was very beneficial for the conversation that it started.”

The three P’s of corrections, according to Wasko, are “physical plant, personnel and programming.” With personnel issues hopefully starting to be addressed, Wasko wants a new maximum-security state penitentiary.

Five months into her role as secretary of corrections, she seems to have the faults of the current facility memorized, pointing them out as she walks down the narrow, steel corridors of the building constructed in 1881.

The prison, a product of the punitive correctional philosophy known as the Auburn System, was built with little thought to inmates with physical disabilities, and she keeps a mental count of potential infractions of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The architecture isn’t accommodating for the rest of those inside, either. One shadowy portion of the ground floor in the east wing violates modern sunlight standards, she says. Rows of cramped cells don’t meet her desired 35 square feet of uncovered space, and most of them still employ “combos,” a setup with the toilet jutting out directly from under the sink.

“Nobody should have to lean over their toilet to brush their teeth,” she says.

Rather than the semi-circular design, open lines of sight and elevated surveillance pods that characterize more modern, efficient facilities, the architecture is ripe with corners and narrow walkways.

When you think about those big hallways, you have to walk to see the inside of the cell, which is a pretty big risk for staff,” Amber Pirraglia, the state’s Director of Prisons, told Forum News Service in a phone interview on Aug. 22. “There's a lot of blind spots.”

Moving to the Jameson Annex, a maximum security prison built in 1993 on the same campus as the state penitentiary, the differences in architecture and staff safety are clear.

Building a new, 1,372-bed facility to replace the state penitentiary and centralize programming for inmates with physical disabilities, addiction and mental illness was at the top of the list of Wasko’s priorities during the first task force meeting.

“They're telling us about building these things in more of a circular fashion, meaning you can staff them with fewer CO’s,” Will Mortenson, a Republican representative from Fort Pierre and member of the task force, said. “So that's all good from a government efficiency standpoint, but even more so from a safety standpoint it's important.”

That new facility, if the more than $300 million price tag is approved by the legislature, is still at least three years away, Wasko said.

Until then, she said the department would have to get back to basics, starting with a 40-hour training program headed by Pirraglia focused on re-teaching prison fundamentals to every person in the department, covering topics from modern correction terms to effectively managing single points-of-entry at every facility.

“Our staff are super important in this process. Without them we couldn't do it,” Pirraglia said about the rationale behind the training course. “So I'm blessed to be a part of this team, and I'm hoping that we can make some changes to make it safe, because that's ultimately what's first for everybody involved.”

Jason Harward is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about state politics in South Dakota. Contact him at 605-301-0496 or jharward@forumcomm.com.