Fri. Jan 24th, 2025

Jake Gadsden, the governor’s nominee to lead the state’s probation agency, speaks to reporters at the Statehouse on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — A deputy director for South Carolina’s prisons agency is the governor’s pick to lead the department tasked with supervising people completing their sentences outside the razor wire.

Gov. Henry McMaster on Thursday nominated Jake Gadsden, a former state prison warden, to oversee the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services.

If confirmed by the Senate, Gadsden will oversee 740 employees in an agency that monitors more than 20,000 people sentenced to probation instead of prison time. The department is also in charge of helping more than 1,300 former inmates released on parole find housing and jobs to reenter society, according to the agency. Its parole board determines whether inmates can be released before the end of their sentence.

McMaster said putting Gadsden in charge will better connect the two agencies charged with overseeing incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.

“We all are trying to do the same thing, to help these individuals build their lives and let their families have a better life,” Gadsden said.

The position opened up when the agency’s former director, Jerry Adger, retired in 2023. Over the last 19 months, three acting directors have run the department.

McMaster turned his search to the Department of Corrections in the hopes of finding someone who knew the state prison system well. His hope is that improved communication and collaboration between the agencies will better help former inmates reintegrate with society, he said.

The agencies “are dealing with the same people at different stages of their lives,” McMaster said. “Their purposes and goals overlapped.”

As deputy director for programs, reentry and rehabilitative services at the Department of Corrections, 65-year-old Gadsden has spent the past several years overseeing inmates’ education and transitional services. The goal has been to help them develop the skills they need to reintegrate with society upon release, he said.

That made him the ideal candidate, said Corrections Director Bryan Stirling.

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“Jake now understands the start of that process and the end of that process,” Stirling said.

Gadsden intends to get people’s families more involved in their rehabilitation, he said.

“It takes a village to help somebody who’s been down on their luck for a while, to give them a second chance and also give them support,” he said.

Originally from North Charleston, Gadsden got his bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina before completing a management training program at Harvard. He oversaw prisons in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Virginia before returning to South Carolina in 2019, according to his resume.

Gadsden worked as warden of the medium-security Tyger River Correctional Institution before becoming a regional director of operations, overseeing six prisons. He was promoted to deputy director in 2021. His current salary is $169,095, according to the Department of Administration.

With over 30 years of experience working in corrections, “he’s seen it from every direction in different places,” McMaster said.

“He is uniquely experienced, uniquely situated and has exactly the right South Carolina temperament for this terrific job,” the governor said.