Interior Department OKs building a new Warm Springs jail; current jail closed for past year
Police have been taking those arrested to regional jail in The Dalles
WARM SPRINGS, Ore. (KTVZ) -- A year after the Warm Springs Tribal Police Department's roughly half-century-old jail was closed, amid COVID and other issues, the U.S. Interior Department has approved construction of a new facility, Police Chief Bill Elliott said Tuesday.
The Department of the Interior's Department of Facilities Management and Construction Indian Affairs Office has approved the new facility, he said. The decision comes after a year-long shutdown of the current facility due to maintenance and safety issues concerning inmates and staff.
Elliott called it "an old, old facility" built in the 1970s and "past its time" that could not allow for isolation of individuals with those needs.
Williams said the tribe is awaiting the start of the initial consultation phase of this process, at which time matters such as the exact layout and possible location sites for this facility will be discussed.
Since the closure, arrested individuals needing to be incarcerated have been taken to the Northern Oregon Regional (NORCOR) correctional facility, Elliott told NewsChannel 21.
The police chief said there have been "ongoing negotiations for the last 20 years. It's a matter of assessing needs. It's been a lot of hard work to put together all the facts, to demonstrate we had a need here."
"It will be exciting to have a facility that can accommodate the entire needs of the public and staff," Elliott said.
As part of their federal responsibility to public safety on tribal lands throughout the country, the federal government, through congressional appropriations, selects these types of projects for a certain number of tribes annually who can demonstrate the need, Elliott said in a news release.
It is the intent of the WSTPD, who administers the corrections program on the Warm Springs Reservation, to have a facility that provides a safe environment for both inmates and staff, and is capable of handling issues such as areas to contain possible outbreaks of contagious diseases, and handle the most vulnerable of the tribe’s population, providing access to mental health and other services to assist in options to incarcerations and/or rehabilitation.
