By Dana Hess Community News Service
PIERRE — On Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee gave its approval for a bill that would establish a clearinghouse for information about missing persons in South Dakota.
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg explained that SB 27 was an extension of a bill approved in last year’s legislative session tasking his office with preparing guidelines and procedures for the reporting and investigation of missing persons cases, including missing and murdered indigenous women and children.
The bill approved by the committee requires law enforcement agencies in the state to collect information about missing persons and share that information with the clearinghouse. The legislation calls for two websites to include the information, one for the public and one for law enforcement.
Ravnsborg said that the legislation allows the Division of Criminal Investigation to share information with the public. Usually DCI deals in confidential information that it shares only with other law enforcement agencies.
The new website will have fresher information according to Ravnsborg, who said when he took office as attorney general he noticed the “same seven people on my website that we’ve always had.”
Requiring law enforcement agencies to use the clearinghouse and sharing the information with the public should make it easier to find missing persons. As an example, Ravnsborg noted that last year the body of a woman was pulled out of the Missouri River. She had been gone for two years, but never reported missing.
“It’s difficult to find someone when you don’t know they’ re missing,” Ravnsborg said.
Sen. Craig Kennedy, D- Yankton, took exception to a portion of the bill’s language that called for adults to be taken off the website once they’re found, but runaway or missing juveniles would stay on the site until they turn 18, even if they are found.
Charles McGuigan of the attorney general’s office said the juvenile information would stay on the law enforcement site only, to keep it from having to be reposted for habitual runaways.
“Don’t you run the risk of confusion, even if it’s just for law enforcement purposes?” Kennedy asked.
Kennedy proposed an amendment that calls for purging all information from the site for adults and juveniles once the missing person had been found.
Ravnsborg said he would accept the change as a friendly amendment though “we would prefer the bill as written.”
The amended legislation was approved unanimously by the committee and will now go on to the Senate.
In a rule change this year, bills with unanimous committee approval are automatically placed on the chamber’s consent calendar. In the past, placement on the consent calendar took a special action by the committee. Items on the consent calendar are usually approved without further discussion.
