The Bureau of Indian Affairs has shut down a detention facility on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

The BIA said the facility was unsafe for human occupation but the Oglala Sioux Tribe wasn't told in advance of the decision. Yet the BIA transferred the inmates to a newer facility that the tribe built.

"I'm not happy with the way it was conducted," Joe Herman, the tribe's police chief, told The Rapid City Journal. "It was a little sudden, no real dialogue between the tribe and the BIA, other than to make an unannounced visit, then close it up. It was kind of disrespectful."

The BIA has a backlog of $8.4 billion in construction and rehabilitation of jails in Indian Country, according to a report the Bush administration has disavowed.

Get the Story:
BIA shuts 'unsafe' jail in Pine Ridge (The Rapid City Journal 8/11)

June 18, 2008, Hearing Record:
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6

Alternate Download of Shubnum Report:
Report Only | Appendix A | Appendix B | Appendix D | Appendix F | Appendix G | Appendix H | Appendix K | Appendix L | Appendix N | Appendix O | Jim Cason Letter
Other appendices too large for download.

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