Are Prisons Obsolete?

“prisons, as employed by the Euro-American system, operate to keep Native Americans in a colonial situation.” 87 She points out that Native people are vastly overrepresented in the country’s federal and state prisons. In Montana, where she did her research, they constitute 6 percent of the general population, but 17.3 percent of the imprisoned population. Native women are even more disproportionately present in Montana’s prison system. They constitute 25 percent of all women imprisoned by the state.