Photos: Here Are the “Dog Kennels” Arrested #NoDAPL Protesters Were Put In

In the wake of the #NoDAPL riot last week one of the big talking points being pushed by the anti-pipeline activists and their media friends was the idea that people arrested at the riot were put in “dog kennels.”

“We were caged in dog kennels and sat on the floor and we were marked with numbers,” one of the protesters told the Washington Post. “My mind, I couldn’t wrap it around the fact that this is happening today. This isn’t something that we’re reading in history books.”

Which sounds awful. So I requested photos of these supposed “dog kennels” from Morton County, and I’m not sure the reality of what these things look like matches some of the outrage we heard online.

While these structures look like something you could reasonably use to kennel a dog in, they also seem like a perfectly acceptable way to house prisoners for short periods of time while officials process them.

“Morton County Correctional Center has room for only 42 inmates,” Morton County spokesman Rob Keller told me in an email.

“They are temporary until the Correctional Center can get them processed into our facility or transferred to another facility in North Dakota,” he added. “The temporary housing units have been inspected and approved by the ND Department of Corrections which has oversight over all county correctional centers in ND.”