BIA report on detention facilities made public

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Filed Under: Law | Politics

After a threat of subpoena, a Bureau of Indian Affairs report on the conditions of detention facilities in Indian Country has finally been made public over the objections of the Bush administration.

The BIA paid a consultant to assess conditions at reservation jails. The report was finished earlier this year but the administration refused to release it despite repeated requests from the Senate Indian Affairs Committee

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), the chairman of the committee, threatened to subpoena the report when he was told the White House Office of Management and Budget was holding it back. The administration relented and submitted two copies to the committee.

Dorgan dropped his subpoena and said he would include the draft of the report, called "Master Plan for Justice Services in Indian Country," in the official record of a June 19 hearing on law enforcement. The record was finalized today.

"This report confirms what so many in Indian Country have known all along-- the tribal jail system is unbelievably broken,” said Dorgan in a statement. "There are not enough beds, facilities must be improved, and there is a lack of trained staff. This is a crisis that allows half of all of those in Indian Country who should be incarcerated to go free."

Senators who saw the report prior to its public release noted that it cites an $8.4 billion backlog in construction and rehabilitation of detention facilities. More funding would be needed to adequately staff the jails.

"It's an embarrassment that we in the Congress are not able to meet these requirements for our own Native American population and yet we're willing to spend $50 billion on this foreign aid program," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said last month on a $2 billion amendment that would provide funds to detention facilities.

Other reports from the Interior Department and the Justice Department show that detention facilities in Indian Country are overcrowded, understaffed and in extremely poor condition. Suicides of adult and juvenile offenders have been attributed to inadequate conditions.

The administration, however, contends there are "serious problems" with the new report. A letter from Jim Cason, the associate deputy secretary at the Interior Department claims the consultant "misconstrued even the simplest of facts" and included statements that aren't supported by evidence.

"These are just a few of the reasons why we believe the report confuses this issue, and why we asked that it not be given credibility by placing it, unchallenged, in the public record," Cason wrote in the July 3 letter to the committee.

http://www.indianz.com/News/2008/010225.asp