Early this year, Terry Van Zanten and his family began to empty out their work space inside the Jameson Annex of the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
It took months to move Metal Craft Industries out of the shop where maximum security inmates had worked for more than two decades, earning market-rate wages building parts for lawn mowers and other equipment.
To hear Van Zanten tell it, the Department of Corrections (DOC) bullied his company out the door.
There were unclear and unreasonable demands for change, he said, made with little guidance and a tighter timeline than he could manage without putting his business and clients in jeopardy.
Van Zanten saw Metal Craft’s DOC partnership as a benefit for prisoners , the prison system and taxpayers.
Inmates able to pay room and board are expected to, but most can’t. Van Zanten’s employees could. Between 2020 and 2024 alone, Metal Craft Industries paid $3.6 million in wages to its inmate employees, according to figures released to South Dakota Searchlight by the DOC. In that timeframe, those employees paid $219,000 into the state crime victim’s fund, more than $1.3 million for room and board and $219,000 in child and family support.