Federal probe focuses on tribal prison deaths

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON - Federal investigators have uncovered abuse, neglect and inhumane conditions in the Native American prison system that could have contributed to some deaths, Interior Department officials said Thursday.

An undisclosed number of deaths are being investigated by the department's Inspector General's Office as part of a probe into run-down prisons on tribal lands across the nation, said Dave Anderson, Interior's assistant secretary for Indian affairs. He declined to elaborate on the number of deaths being investigated, how the victims were killed or whether they included employees as well as inmates.

Anderson said investigators have found that some juvenile offenders have been forced to share cellblocks with adult inmates in the prison system, which in 2002 held 2,080 inmates in 74 prisons scattered across 55 million acres of Indian lands in the United States.

The probe also has found that some guards routinely have been put at risk because of staffing shortages in 30-year-old facilities where some cell doors no longer can be locked.

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