On April 22, 2026, state officials in Sioux Falls picked up ceremonial shovels and broke ground on the most expensive state-funded building project in South Dakota history — a 1,500-bed men's prison with a $650 million price tag.

The men in charge of it spent the ceremony making an argument that would have sounded radical in the state a few years ago. Corrections Secretary Nick Lamb told the crowd the old penitentiary was built for an era when inmates were "warehoused, not helped to readjust to society," and that the new one had to be different.

"We have to do better" in South Dakota. "We have to get better at rehabilitation, and this facility will help us do that."

That is the whole idea behind the First Step Act — the federal prison and sentencing law that passed Congress in December 2018 and that President Trump signed into law. Give people in prison programs that work, let them earn their way to an earlier release, and fewer of them come back.

Mike Rounds voted against it.

One of twelve

The First Step Act cleared the Senate on December 18, 2018 by a vote of 87 to 12. Eighty-seven senators from both parties said yes. Twelve said no.

Rounds was one of the twelve. So were Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, John Barrasso, Ben Sasse and Richard Shelby. That is the entire company he kept on a bill the sitting Republican president had personally pushed and would sign days later.

What he said at the time

The day after the vote, Rounds put out a statement explaining himself. The language is worth reading closely, because almost every piece of it has since been tested against reality.

"I support the intent of criminal justice reform, particularly for nonviolent offenders, but the First Step Act fails to adequately protect South Dakota families from violent criminals who should remain behind bars."

"We can't be soft on crime when we're facing a serious drug epidemic across our state and nation."

"Without the support of our attorney general and local law enforcement officials — who will be the ones dealing with dangerous criminals released early from the federal prison system — I could not in good conscience vote in favor of legislation that poses a threat to public safety."

Three claims: the law would free violent criminals, it was soft on drugs, and law enforcement was against it.

The law does not do what he said it does

Start with the violent criminals. The Bureau of Prisons — the agency that actually runs the program — spells out who can and cannot earn time credits under the First Step Act. People convicted of violent offenses, terrorism, sex crimes, trafficking, high-level drug trafficking, and firearm possession as a repeat felon are not eligible. The exclusion list was written into the bill. It is not a loophole somebody found later; it is the design.

Now the law enforcement part. Rounds said he couldn't vote yes "without the support of ... local law enforcement officials." Some police groups did oppose the bill. But the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents more than 330,000 officers, endorsed it — and so did the National District Attorneys Association. FOP national president Chuck Canterbury said the bill would "make our streets and neighborhoods safer".

Rounds didn't lack law enforcement support. He picked the law enforcement groups that agreed with the vote he was going to cast anyway.

And then the results came in

The Council on Criminal Justice went back and checked what happened to the people released under the law. Roughly 30,000 people came home under its provisions between 2020 and 2022. Their recidivism rate was 12.4% — compared to an estimated 19.8% for people in similar situations released before the law existed. That is roughly a third fewer people coming back.

Fewer crimes. Fewer victims. Fewer prison beds needed. That is the bill Rounds said "poses a threat to public safety."

Meanwhile, in South Dakota

Here is why this is not an old vote about a distant federal agency.

South Dakota incarcerates 812 people out of every 100,000 — a higher share of its own residents than any independent democratic country on earth. Roughly 8,200 South Dakotans are behind bars.

And the state is losing ground. In December 2025, the Department of Corrections released its annual report: half of everyone released from a South Dakota prison is back within three years. That is the highest rate in at least eight years, and seven points worse than the year before. Among Native Americans it's 59%. Among Native American women it's 66%. Native people make up 39% of the state prison population.

That is the population the new $650 million building is being sized for.

The $2.7 million South Dakota wouldn't spend

The new prison came with a promise. To win over skeptical legislators, Gov. Larry Rhoden created a Correctional Rehabilitation Task Force. Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken agreed to host the prison in his city only after pleading with the state to fund rehabilitation programs alongside it.

Then the 2026 legislative session happened. House Bill 1086 would have given the Department of Corrections $2.7 million over five years for leadership training aimed at cutting repeat offenses. It got through the Joint Committee on Appropriations 10-6. It died on the House floor 42-23, short of the two-thirds needed for spending bills. Lawmakers cited cost and doubts about whether it would work.

At the groundbreaking, TenHaken said lawmakers "unfortunately" shot the money down, and repeated what he hears inside the penitentiary walls:

"They talk less about the building — and I know we need the facility — but we talk a lot about the need for programs."

$650 million for the building. Not $2.7 million for the programs. That is the same instinct Rounds acted on in 2018, scaled down to a state legislature.

About that drug epidemic

Rounds' loudest line was the drug one — we can't be soft on crime "when we're facing a serious drug epidemic."

In 2024, 91% of male inmates and 97% of female inmates in South Dakota prisons had a substance abuse problem. Treatment is the drug policy. Everything else is storage.

So look at what Rounds has actually done about paying for that treatment. Medicaid is the single largest payer of behavioral health services in the country, and 21% of Medicaid enrollees have a substance use disorder. Rounds voted for Trump's budget bill in July 2025 — every Senate Republican did except Susan Collins, Rand Paul and Thom Tillis — and KFF projects that about 13,000 South Dakotans will lose Medicaid by 2034 as a result, with the state losing $931 million in federal funding for the program.

You cannot call addiction an emergency and then vote to take away the thing that pays to treat it.

Tough on crime, depending on the crime

There's a pattern here that goes well beyond one senator. Republicans in Congress have been perfectly willing to write new prison time into law — when the defendant is the right kind of defendant. Jason Smith, who chairs the House's tax committee, buried a provision doubling the maximum prison sentence to 10 years for leaking someone's tax return on page 1,081 of Trump's budget bill. That's the punishment reserved for exposing what billionaires pay in taxes.

And at the other end, the mercy has been flowing freely — to the connected. A convicted fraudster from the Jack Abramoff scandal gave $2,600 to a Republican congressman's PAC and was pardoned by Trump three days later.

Harsher sentences for leaking a tax return. Pardons for donors. And a no vote on the one law that measurably reduced the number of people cycling back into federal prison.

He's on the ballot

Rounds won his primary on June 2, 2026 and faces voters again on November 3, running for a third term.

South Dakota now has a $650 million prison going up, the highest recidivism rate it has recorded in at least eight years, and a corrections secretary standing in a construction site saying "we have to do better." Eight years ago, Rounds had the chance to vote for a law that did better — a bipartisan one, endorsed by the country's largest police union, signed by the Republican president whose agenda he votes for.

Eighty-seven senators figured it out. He was one of twelve who didn't.

Source

Cost savings and improved outcomes emphasized at men's prison groundbreaking — South Dakota Searchlight, April 22, 2026. Photo by John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight.