youth. That’s what a series of recent reports have shown. In June the Tribal Law and Policy Institute reported that state courts are twice as likely to incarcerate Native teens for minor crimes like truancy and alcohol use, than any other racial and ethnic group. All three recent reports call for reform.The Navajo juvenile detention center in Tuba City, at a recent visit, was empty. Corrections Lieutenant Robbin Preston said even though they have 36 beds at the facility, the average population is only one or two teens a day:
The Navajo Nation is reluctant to send youth to these facilities. It’s used more as a last resort, so our population has been very, very low.
Preston said the low jail population doesn’t reflect the number of troubled Navajo youth who need help, and that help is nearly impossible to find on this reservation and most others. The Navajo can’t afford the rehabilitative services, treatment programs and case workers that are provided for youth at detention facilities around the country.
Addie Rolnick, a law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, says:
It’s a misnomer to say there’s a juvenile justice system in Indian Country. Native youth arrested face a maze of legal jurisdictions — tribal, federal and state. There are two or three different governments in charge of dealing with kids, and they may or may not talk to each other. Where the kids end up being sent may not be a good place for them.
The majority of Native American youth live in communities with alarmingly high rates of alcoholism, domestic violence and suicide. They suffer from post traumatic stress at a rate higher than military personnel who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Rolnick said incarceration should be the last option for kids exposed to so much violence:
If you have a population of kids who have suffered trauma and violence and abuse, and that’s true for a lot of kids in the justice system, especially a lot of girls, it’s really true for native youth, the last thing you want to do is lock them up put them in places where they’re watched by cameras and guards all the time.
The U.S. Attorney General’s Advisory Committee On American Indian/Alaska Native Children Exposed To Violence said prevention and treatment programs have proven to be more effective than incarceration. But most tribes rely on federal funding sources. And it’s easier to fund a jail, a building, something tangible than it is to fund a program.
The Navajo Nation, the country’s largest tribe, does provide limited funds to run one prevention program called Dine Youth–an after-school program that keeps kids out of trouble.
Theresa Hatathlie, who has worked with Dine Youth for more than a decade, says:
I listen to a lot of the kids’ stories, and a lot of times they just need somebody to hear them and to acknowledge them.
Dine Youth puts a strong emphasis on learning Navajo culture, language and philosophy.
All three reports concluded that’s what Native youth are missing is a connection to their heritage. The researchers pointed to the painful legacy troubled youth have inherited. For centuries the federal government forced Native Americans off their land and youth into boarding schools to erase their Native identity. That trauma has compounded over generations.
Law professor Addie Rolnick said lawmakers need to look beyond jails and courts, because it’s investing in treatment and prevention programs like Dine Youth that are going to make a difference with kids.
