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| Religion Forum Index » Wicca Forum » More than 50,000 people are arrested across the Navajo... |
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| Usenet Legends bobandcarole ▲▲▲▲... |
 Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 5:51 am |
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x-no-archive:
50,000 a year?????? What a bunch of trashy, troublemaking cockbites!
TUBA CITY, Ariz. -- More than 50,000 people are arrested across the
Navajo reservation each year -- but there are only 59 jail beds here.
Officials say the lack of jail space has led to a revolving door for
criminals, most of whom are released within a day of being booked, and
few of whom serve out an entire sentence.
"It's been a horrendous situation," said Hope MacDonald-Lonetree, a
Navajo council delegate. "You can't assure the safety of the police
and judges and the prosecutors when you have the perpetuators running
around. And it affects the courts because people aren't willing to be
witnesses."
Tribal leaders are hoping that may change soon, thanks to a $224
million U.S. Justice Department stimulus grant that has been set aside
to build and repair jails on American Indian land. The Navajo Nation,
the country's largest tribe, received the biggest share of the money
-- more than $74 million for the construction of three new jails.
The jails will add 144 beds to the Navajo reservation and will house
alcohol counseling programs to help curb the high rate of repeat
alcohol-related arrests, which corrections officials say is the main
source of overcrowding.
The money comes after years of unsuccessful Navajo lobbying for more
federal help with law and order.
The federal government is required to fund jails on reservations as
part of its trust responsibility to the nation's tribes. The Bureau of
Indian Affairs pays to run
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jails on American Indian land and the Justice Department pays to build
them.
But the BIA has had a bad track record with tribal jails -- a 2004
U.S. Interior Department Inspector General report on American Indian
detention facilities found that some "were egregiously unsafe,
unsanitary, and a hazard to both inmates and staff alike."
The Justice Department for the past several years has had an annual
budget of under $10 million to construct new facilities and fund
repairs for the 80 or so existing jails on reservations across the
country.
American Indian advocates say overcrowded and underfunded tribal jails
have contributed to disproportionately high rates of crime in American
Indian country. According to a Justice Department survey, American
Indians experience almost twice as much violence as the rest of
America.
On the Navajo reservation, which encompasses 27,000 square miles of
Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, tribal officials say gang activity is at
an all-time high, and chronic alcoholism and substance abuse have
helped make domestic violence and drunken driving common.
No new jail facilities have been constructed here since a juvenile
facility was built in the 1980s.
Two years ago, two of the tribe's main jails were condemned and
closed, leaving just three jails, in the towns of Shiprock, Window
Rock and Crownpoint. Those facilities -- cinder block structures that
were built in the 1950s and 1960s -- are barely habitable, corrections
officials say, and are so overcrowded that jail workers frequently are
forced to decide which prisoners to release early in order to make
room for new ones.
"We're always playing musical chairs -- or musical jail beds," said
Delores Greyeyes, who heads the Navajo Nation Department of
Corrections. "We just pump (prisoners) through."
Navajo courts are responsible for prosecuting only misdemeanor crimes
-- such as burglary, battery and drunken driving -- and the maximum
punishment for a conviction is one year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
People accused of committing felonies are transferred to prisons off
of the reservation and are prosecuted federally.
Peterson Wilson, the prosecutor for the Tuba City District, one of
nine judicial districts on the Navajo Nation, said, "A lot of crimes
go unreported because there's an impression that we won't hold the
criminal." And prosecutors and judges are disinclined to push for
harsh sentences when they know there's no place to house criminals, he
said.
He hopes the new jails, which will be built next year in Tuba City,
Kayenta, Ariz., and Ramah, N.M., will help fix that.
Tuba City, the biggest town on the reservation, received the largest
single Justice Department grant -- $38 million for a 62-bed jail. It
will offer inmates mental health and alcohol rehabilitation
counseling.
Although alcohol is illegal on the Navajo Nation, alcoholism is
widespread, and the majority of the inmates are booked for public
intoxication. Jails have become a catch-all for people who need help,
McDonald-Lonetree said. She hopes the rehab programs will help stop
that.
"We don't want to have to build another 100-bed facility in the
future. We don't want to go into the business of warehousing
individuals like the rest of America does," she said. "We want to
rehabilitate people." |
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