The Southern Ute Tribal Council on Monday reversed a decision to close the Southern Ute Detention Center and said it will instead seek new funding to keep the facility open in 2020, according to an announcement.
The Southern Ute Detention Center, which cost the tribe about $2 million each year to operate, “will remain open pending additional review” despite Tribal Council action last year to close the facility, spokeswoman Lindsay Box wrote in a news release.
The council decided in October to close the 57-bed facility as part of an effort to reduce tribal costs. It said at the time that the detention center “serves very few Southern Ute tribal members but costs millions of dollars to operate.”
The Southern Ute Detention Center’s population decreased in recent years; the facility in 2019 incarcerated 13 people each day, on average. The tribe employs 30 people at the Southern Ute Detention Center, Box wrote in an email.
The tribe said council “reconsidered the determining factors, including new solutions to offset operational expenses” since making the decision to close the detention center, according to an announcement from the tribe.
“The Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council decided to revisit the circumstances for the Southern Ute Detention Center closure to be sure all efforts to offset and/or decrease operational expenses were exhausted,” Box wrote in an email.
If the Southern Ute Detention Center closed, tribal members incarcerated could have been sent to La Plata County Jail, which held around 200 people on an average day last year.
Southern Ute members criticized the decision to close the facility after the news hit social media, some saying the tribe’s sovereignty is compromised by sending Native Americans off tribal lands for incarceration.
The Tribal Council will convene quarterly to “review the determining factors,” Box wrote in an email.
