Dear Editor,
It looks like South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and every legislator who voted for more prisons has entered the realm of the ridiculous. How many more studies must be done, how much more experience as a society do we have to have before we realize that crime is a symptom?
It is a loud and clear message that something is radically wrong with this system.
Isn’t it painfully obvious that prisoners, in fact, a majority of the population, are unhappy about something? Even the wealthy are unhappy and they’re not smart enough to realize that their distress is what’s trickling down into the general population, not their wealth, as the economists used to say would happen.
If you look at a normal human being, you realize a human is happiest when those around him are happy. It is such a fundamental truth it makes one wonder how the acquisition of wealth became the defining principle of a “modern,” “intelligent” society. Not so terribly long ago, people who had their “feet on the ground” were valued because they recognized the value of their neighbors and understood the goodness of the very earth they stood upon. It’s not a quality you see much anymore. Now, fully one third of the population has a criminal record and that’s not counting the crime of acquiescing to a criminal society and the white collar crime of those at the top who’ve made their crimes legal. I am a solitary voice crying out in the wilderness of Hutchinson County.
Be careful of your arrogance, Governor. Your value system is part of the problem, in fact your value system is the kind of conceit that appears in every system before its collapse. Be advised. Take that money you want to put in prisons and go to every prisoner and every troubled person in the state and ask them what they need to be satisfied with their life and then try to give it to them. That would be something like an intelligent approach. You claim to represent Christian values. Don’t be a BSer, because right now you’re oozing BS and I say that with all due respect.
Roger Pfeifle
Olivet, SD
Leave a Reply