Kentucky Indigenous Group Buys Land Targeted for Federal Prison
Prison proposal was previously dropped in 2019 due to being a bad use of federal funds
An Indigenous, woman-led community organization in Eastern Kentucky is doing it's part to help stem America's mass incarceration problem.
The Appalachian Rekindling Project paid local property owners $160,000 in December for 63 acres near the community of Roxana, according to a deed of sale obtained by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. The land makes up a portion of the 500-acre site where the Federal Bureau of Prisons planned to build an estimated $500 million prison complex to incarcerate more than 1,300 people.
The Appalachian Rekindling Project wants to instead reclaim the former strip mine by reintroducing native species like bison to the land and return its stewardship to Indigenous and local communities, according to a press release from the group.
Mitch Whitaker, who owns property about a mile from the proposed prison site, said “If they're going to do something with the land, this would be a much better solution." Whitaker was part of a lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons challenging plans to build a prison here in 2017. The Bureau of Prisons temporarily dropped the proposal two years later. The proposal for a new prison resurfaced in 2022. Whitaker said he has been disheartened lately that US Representative Hal Rogers (R) of eastern Kentucky appeared to put the prison build on a fast track while ignoring concerns from locals who opposed the project.
Hugh Hurwitz, who served as Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2019 when the proposal was initially dropped, said the Letcher County prison was a bad use of federal funds. Federal prison populations are declining and Hurwitz said the Letcher County site lacked needed infrastructure.
Joan Steffen, an attorney with the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, worked with the Appalachian Rekindling Project to purchase the land. Both groups are part of a coalition called Building Community Not Prisons that emerged to fight against the proposed prison in Letcher County and mass incarceration nationwide.
“We're at this pivot point where we're seeing many of these prison construction projects across the country, and are confronted with a question of whether we as a nation want to continue to invest our resources back into the system of incarceration or if we want to start investing in other forms of addressing harm and benefiting our communities,” Steffen said.
Read the press release from the Appalachian Rekindling Project, "Community-based Indigenous organization acquires property on proposed federal prison site as part of grassroots effort to create a different future for Eastern Kentucky" in the Appalachian Voice. The Appalachian Rekindling Project is a region-wide initiative that began to establish and sustain an intertribal Indigenous center where Native people can physically return and gather in central Appalachia as well as to care for and protect land collectively.
