South Dakota Moves to Full JDAI Implementation

South Dakota’s two largest counties—Minnehaha and Pen­ning­ton —imple­ment­ed a full con­tin­u­um of deten­tion alter­na­tives in Jan­u­ary 2012.

The plan includes reduc­ing the use of deten­tion alto­geth­er for low- and medi­um-risk youth and part­ner­ing with com­mu­ni­ty-based agen­cies on deten­tion alternatives.

The state advi­so­ry group has aligned fed­er­al DMC funds with the two local JDAI steer­ing com­mit­tees, mak­ing JDAI the inte­gral strat­e­gy for reduc­ing racial and eth­nic disparities.

South Dako­ta will also design pro­ba­tion response grids that use incen­tives and sanc­tions. The grids will be imple­ment­ed local­ly and mon­i­tored with the sup­port of the Uni­fied Judi­cial Sys­tem, the state’s pro­ba­tion agency.

“It’s been a very pro­duc­tive year for the state,” said Stephanie Vet­ter, tech­ni­cal assis­tance provider and team leader. ​“Cred­it goes to the peo­ple on the ground—at both the pol­i­cy and prac­tice level—who under­stand the ben­e­fits of JDAI and are will­ing to do the hard work of implementation.”

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Erin Srst­ka.