Poor employee training and general neglect afflict the tribal jails that serve often-remote Native American communities.
At least 19 people have died in tribal jails overseen by the federal government since 2016, according to an investigation by NPR and the Mountain West News Bureau and NPR.
One of those was Carlos Yazzie who died unattended in a tribal jail after being taken into custody with a dangerous amount of alcohol in his system.
“He was a hard worker with a talent for masonry,” recalled his brother Chris. “That is when he wasn't drinking.”
“We played baseball and just grew up thinking that we were normal kids until we really started getting into alcohol in high school, and then all the trouble just started,” Chris Yazzie said.
Mountain West News Bureau reporter Nate Hegyi, who is investigating tribal jails, told State of Nevada that poor training of workers and understaffing are issues facing many of the far-flung jails, including the one in New Mexico where Yazzie died.
“It had been chronically understaffed for a long time, and it's really hard to get people to work in a jail,” he said, adding that this jail “ had cracked walls, bad drinking water, very stuffy.
“I've been in this jail,” Hegyi said. “It's not a fun place to be and hard to retain staff there.”
He said the Department of the Interior has promised to contract with an outside agency for a study of the tribal jail program.
“I just checked in with the press secretary for the Department of the Interior to see how that review was going,” Hegyi said. “And they said that they couldn't give me any updates.”
For his part, Chris Yazzie said he wants better medical care for those incarcerated in tribal jails and better training for the people who work there.
“As a registered nurse myself, I feel like it's very important not to leave important medical decisions up to officers that aren't trained in the medical field,” he said.
Nate Hegyi, reporter, Mountain West News Bureau; Chris Yazzie, brother died in tribal jail
