FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 22, 2025
Pierre, SD – Speaker Jon Hansen issued the following statement in response to shocking new revelations from the Department of Corrections:
In the course of reviewing policy surrounding our prison system, I have confirmed that the South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) has been using your tax dollars to provide transgender cross-sex hormones to convicted criminals in prison.
And now, they are hiding their DOC transgender policy from the public.
The entire transgender ideology is a LIE, and as we’ve seen, it’s HARMING many good people. But instead of rooting it out, the DOC is institutionalizing it by providing cross-sex hormones to convicted criminals—and on top of that—they are using your tax money to pay for it.
This is wrong.
I have also discovered that the DOC employs a “gender dysphoria committee” to determine which prisoners receive cross-sex hormones, but the DOC does not disclose the members of this committee to the public.
What I HAVE uncovered about who makes these decisions are three state contracts over the last three years totaling more than $140,000 for east coast College Professor and “Human Services Consultant,” Cynthia Osborne, to provide “gender dysphoria services” to the DOC. Her job: determine diagnoses and recommend transgender treatment. How far is Osborne willing to push the trans agenda? Well in 2016, Osborne published an article with recommendations to prison administrators on facilitating provision of sex reassignment SURGERIES to inmates.
Why on earth are South Dakota taxpayers paying an out-of-state professor/consultant to push policies that don’t reflect our values? Why aren’t we relying on South Dakota medical professionals who reject the radical trans ideology instead of outsourcing our corrections policies to east coast ideologues?
Think about it: while South Dakota families struggle with rising property taxes and healthcare costs, our state government is quietly spending your dollars on cross-sex trans hormones for convicted criminals and contracts with woke consultants and professors. Every dollar wasted here is one less dollar in the pockets of taxpayers or for other programs that actually benefit the families of our state.
I am calling on Governor Rhoden and the Department of Corrections to stop using taxpayer dollars to pay for transgender cross-sex hormones in our prisons. I am also calling on them to terminate the contract with Cynthia Osborne. The DOC transgender policy and the names of those on the Gender Dysphoria Committee should be made public.
South Dakota deserves better. We are not California or New York—we should not be importing their failed woke policies into our state.
