[1] The South Dakota State Penitentiary is located in northern Sioux Falls, occupying approximately thirty acres.

Inmate employment within the Penitentiary falls into two basic categories; institutional support and prison industries.

Institutional support includes those employed in food service, as clerks for various departments, as cell orderlies and those working in maintenance.

Prison Industries consists of upholstery, printing, sign, decal, license plates, carpentry, book bindery, machine shop, Braille unit, garments and data entry.

The first convict, Eric Donald Robert, was executed successfully on October 16, 2012, using South Dakota's new single-drug lethal injection method.

[9] In October 2023, the South Dakota Department of Corrections closed on a real estate purchase of two 160 acre parcels of land in Dayton Township in Lincoln County on which they plan to construct a new men's facility to replace the existing penitentiary in Sioux Falls.