Corrections Sergeant

PLEASE ATTACH THE ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS LISTED AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

The South Dakota Department of Corrections is hiring!

Location:

Pierre | Salary: $26.00 to $30.00 hourly, depending on experience.

Full‑time position with the Department of Corrections. Maintains daily contact with offenders, assists them with day‑to‑day living in a correctional facility and organizes their activities while providing motivation and guidance. Facilitates scheduling and program options to help them learn how to change their criminal behavior.

• Department of Correction's Inmate Living Guide, classification system and unit plan.
• Department of Correction's policies and the institution's operations and procedures.
• Modern concepts, principles, and practices related to the re‑entry of offenders back into society.
• Attitude, problems, and behavior of incarcerated individuals.
• Programs available for rehabilitation of offenders.

• Communicate and document logically, accurately, and concisely all pertinent information and decisions.
• Make proper responses to safety and security problems.
• Relate to and establish rapport with offenders and assist them in their initial adaptation to prison life.
• Plan, organize, schedule, and direct the work of others.
• Apply department policies and institution operations and procedures to the assigned housing unit.
• Maintain composure under stressful conditions or tense situations and de‑escalate the situation(s).

• Organizes the schedules, coordinates activities, and manages events for an assigned housing unit to ensure smooth operation.
• Assists offenders with individual and family problems, scheduling and institutional adjustment to help them understand and change their behavior.
• Coordinates and manages unit offender programs to ensure compliance with department policies and institutional operations.
• Provides work direction to Correctional Officers on the unit and performs security operations to ensure staff and offender safety and unit security.
• Conducts unit orientation and offender interviews and completes documentation used to determine cell/room assignment, and the priority for scheduling follow‑on meetings with offenders.
• Serves as a member of the unit Job Boards providing input on classifications, housing and program assignments, work assignments, and program goals to ensure offender needs are met.
• Represents offenders convicted of rule infractions at disciplinary hearings to provide for the security of the unit, the safety of the staff and offenders, and the rehabilitation of the offenders.
• Performs the delegated Corrections Unit Manager duties in their absence.
• Performs other work as assigned.

• Two (2) years of experience working directly with a “hard to serve” high‑needs client population in a correctional or human services environment. Hard‑to‑serve needs clients include individuals with multiple barriers to employment, lack of educational or occupational skills attainment, low‑income workers earning wages below self‑sufficiency, low levels of literacy or English proficiency, disability status, basic skills deficient, homelessness, ex‑offenders and justice involved, and public assistance dependency.
• OR
• Two (2) years of corrections experience where knowledge of offender classification, offender disciplinary system, grievance process, housing assignments and offender programs was obtained and role‑modeling pro‑social behaviors while maintaining positive professional communications by providing offender population with crisis intervention was demonstrated.
• OR
• A combination of education (Criminal Justice, Social Work, Sociology, Psychology, or similarly related field) and experience as defined above equal to two (2) years.

• With or without accommodations, successfully pass all modules of the South Dakota Department of Corrections Basic Training, including English reading comprehension, relevant competency assessments and written/practical exams in Defensive Tactics.
• Possess the physical ability to successfully complete Defensive Tactics; lift arms above head and kick as high as own waist; stabilize another person to…