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| Problems of liberty and justice on the Plains |
| By cnn.com - Lisa Desjardins and Emma Lacey-Bordeaux |
| Published: 08/10/2012 |
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Rosebud, South Dakota (CNN) -- Whoever wins the 2012 U.S. presidential election faces multiple, serious problems in the U.S. prison system. One issue is the soaring prison population and its rising costs; but another is the issue over who makes up that population. The problem in Todd County, South Dakota, is that too many of their young men end up behind bars. "I think every family on this reservation has (a family member) in prison," Rose Bear Robe, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, told CNN. "It's beginning to be normal now, when people used to be ashamed of it." The Rosebud Sioux reservation occupies all of Todd County on the southern border of South Dakota. It spans hundreds of miles of sweeping grassland spilling into four other counties in the state, and is covered with small canyons and winding creeks. That beauty contrasts with small clusters of homes in need of repair and a community clearly in need of jobs. Bear Robe says the rest of the country, outside the reservation, does not realize the serious problems that exist on tribal lands. Huge numbers of a critical group, men, aged 18-30, are in prison rather than trying to build the community and their families, she said. Read Rose Bear Robe's original story on CNN iReport "I don't know how to explain it," said the 56-year-old who is raising her 4-year-old grandson because his dad is serving time, "but the kids really suffer because of their fathers being in prison." Much evidence of the problem is anecdotal, in part because there is little hard data about Native Americans, including basic information like population size. The Census Bureau groups "American Indian" and "Alaska Native" in one category. The agency's latest figures, for 2011, estimate that 8.9% of South Dakota's population is one or the other. Thus, there are no firm numbers for the Native American population by itself, but we know it is, at most, 8.9% of the population in South Dakota. That is significant when compared with data from the state's Department of Corrections, which reported that Native Americans were a whopping 29% of the adult prison population and 38% of juvenile offenders in 2011. This pattern is not limited to the Mount Rushmore State. "In states where Native Americans are a significant portion of the state population, we see generally very significant disparity in (incarceration rates)," said Mark Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization which pushes for prison reform in the U.S. "Native Americans tend to be incarcerated at high rates overall." Read More. |
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