Essay 3000

From USA Today…

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Navajo Nation Faces Lack of Jail Space

By FELICIA FONSECA

CHINLE, Ariz. — With only about 80 jail beds on the sprawling 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, authorities increasingly face a quandary when they catch a suspect: Who should be locked up and who let go?

The guy accused of beating up his wife? Of drunken driving? Of theft?

“What do you do when you don’t have jail bed spaces? It’s a revolving door, and it’s going faster,” said Dolores Greyeyes, director of the tribe’s Department of Corrections.

Last year, police on the reservation made roughly 39,000 misdemeanor arrests. Of those, some 36,000 were released early.

During sentencing, judges have to weigh the seriousness of the charges individuals face and consider what jail space will allow, said Mabel Henderson, program supervisor with the Corrections Department.

“Sometimes the court will look at the cases, and they say, ‘OK, we need bed spaces for more major offenses,’ so all the minor charges are, at that point, released,” she said. “They’ve seen a lot of these people that have been charged over and over that have come before their court, but they just can’t house them.”

Samson Cowboy, director of public safety at the tribe’s Crownpoint jail, said he believes the Navajo jails never were meant to house many criminals. People were supposed to follow the principle known as “k’e”—maintaining relationships through kinship and respect.

But the culture has changed, and there is more crime, he said.

“The whole Navajo Nation is denying we have an issue here, a whole societal issue,” he said.

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