Title: Policing on American Indian Reservations Series: Research Report Author: Stewart Wakeling, Miriam Jorgensen, Susan Michaelson, Manley Begay Published: National Institute of Justice, July 2001 Subject: Other issues in criminal justice: Native Americans 115 pages 295,000 bytes ------------------------------ Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-text file. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobat graphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from NCJRS at 800-851-3420 (877-712-9279 for TTY users). ------------------------------ U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice Research Report Policing on American Indian Reservations Stewart Wakeling Miriam Jorgensen Susan Michaelson Manley Begay ------------------------------ U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs 810 Seventh Street N.W. Washington, DC 20531 John Ashcroft Attorney General Office of Justice Programs World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov National Institute of Justice World Wide Web Site http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij ------------------------------ Policing on American Indian Reservations A Report to the National Institute of Justice Stewart Wakeling Miriam Jorgensen Susan Michaelson Manley Begay Francis X. Hartmann, Co-Principal Investigator Joseph P. Kalt, Co-Principal Investigator Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management and Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts July 2001 NCJ 188095 ------------------------------ Winifred Reed and Phillis McDonald Program Monitors Stewart Wakeling, Susan Michaelson, and Francis X. Hartmann are affiliates of Harvard University's Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management; Miriam Jorgensen, Manley Begay, and Joseph P. Kalt are affiliates of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. This research was supported under award #95-IJ-CX-0086 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. All points of view expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Department of Justice or Harvard University. The National Institute of Justice is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims of Crime. ------------------------------ Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank each of the tribes and tribal police departments that participated in this study for their generous help. Without the information they provided, the work would not have been possible. In particular, we wish to thank the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, the Gila River Indian Community, the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, and the Tohono O'odham Nation for providing access to their police departments, criminal justice systems, and other governmental units. Knowledge we gained from our time on site formed the core of our research. In addition to thanking the four tribal governments, we would like to express our appreciation to the people on each reservation who assisted us in so many ways: sharing information, offering guidance, telling stories, and helping us to get it right. These people included tribal leaders; elders and other community residents; department officials; department clerks and others who tolerated our many requests and questions; and, especially, the police chiefs, captains, and officers who spent many hours talking to us, giving us information, and allowing us to ride with them. We also thank the many individuals in police departments who took the time to complete the surveys. These questionnaires provided an important picture of policing across many departments in Indian Country. Officials in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Division of Law Enforcement Services also were extremely helpful. In particular, Ted Quasula (Chief, BIA, Division of Law Enforcement Services) and Brent LaRocque (Criminal Investigator, BIA, Division of Law Enforcement Services) talked with us at length, introduced us to people both on and off the reservations, provided documents, and supported our work throughout the course of the project. Their perspectives and knowledge of Indian Country were invaluable. We were fortunate to collaborate on the survey with Eileen Luna, assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Through this partnership, we were able to reach more tribes and gather more data than we would have been able to on our own. The authors received essential assistance from staff at the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management: Mairgreg Agen, Stephen Brimley, Edward Gomeau, Gillian Thomson, and Melissa Weintraub. Their contributions, especially to the survey analysis and literature search, are woven throughout the final product. We are especially grateful to our funder, the National Institute of Justice (Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice), for seeing the value in our proposed study. We hope and believe that their recognition of the need for research on Indian Country policing--as evidenced by their support of this study and others--will contribute to tribes' efforts to improve policing, public safety, and the quality of life in their communities. ------------------------------ Executive Summary Introduction This study had two principal goals. The first was to take a broad look at policing in Indian Country in order to better understand the many arrangements for administering reservation police departments, develop an initial assessment of the challenges facing Indian policing, and identify policing strategies and approaches that might be successful in responding to the growing crime problem in Indian Country. The second was to evaluate the prospects for community policing in Indian Country. Could this strategy, which grew out of the experience of police departments in urban settings, be usefully applied to the strikingly different cultural, geographic, and demographic features typical of Indian reservations? This study is a first effort to characterize the variety of arrangements for reservation policing combined with a more comprehensive effort to better understand the operations of a limited set of representative departments and their tribal contexts. Methodology Research for this study included several components. We began with a literature review and visits to several Indian police departments and the Indian Police Academy in New Mexico. We then distributed a two-part survey to Indian police departments and undertook intensive site visits to four reservations. The strategy for selecting study sites was to choose Indian nations that varied on as many relevant dimensions as could be captured in a small sample. The four nations selected were the Tohono O'odham (in Arizona), the Gila River Indian Community (also in Arizona), the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation (in Montana), and the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation (in North Dakota). We studied these reservation departments and the tribal contexts in which they operate in order to gain a richer understanding of the diverse and complex ways in which Native communities cope with policing challenges. One caution is offered here and echoed in the work of other researchers and practitioners in Indian Country (for example, Elias 1998): All but the most basic and easily verified data must be interpreted carefully. For complex reasons, researchers must hold very loosely to data describing important dimensions of policing (including crime) in Indian Country. Policing in Indian Country: The Context In the mid-1990s, estimates of the non-Alaska service population (the number of Native Americans living on or very near reservations) ranged from 1.1 to 1.3 million (Indian Health Service 1997). This population is distributed across the more than 330 Indian nations in the continental United States. Indian nations exhibit an exceptionally wide variety of social and economic characteristics. One important additional type of variation is the substantial cultural diversity found among American Indian communities. While "American Indian" is a single race category on the U.S. Census, members of one tribe can be as different from those of another tribe as citizens of Greece are from citizens of Vietnam. Even so, most Indian nations face severe social and economic problems. Despite new tribal opportunities and ventures, American Indians living on reservations have been and may remain the poorest minority in the United States (Kilborn 1992; Cornell et al. 1998; Pace 2000). More than 200 police departments operate in Indian Country, serving an even larger number of tribal communities. These departments range in size from only 2 or 3 officers to more than 200 officers. The communities they serve are as small as the Grand Canyon-based Havasupai Tribe (with a population of only 600) and as large as the Navajo Nation (with a population of more than 250,000 and a land area larger than the State of Connecticut). The most common administrative arrangement for police departments in Indian Country is organization under the auspices of the Indian Self- Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. Also known as Public Law 93-638 (PL 93-638), this law gives tribes the opportunity to establish their own government functions by contracting with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Thus, "638ed" departments are administered by tribes under contract with the BIA's Division of Law Enforcement Services. Typically, a 638 contract establishes the department's organizational framework and performance standards and provides basic funding for the police function. Officers and nonsworn staff of these departments are tribal employees. Departments administered by the BIA are the second most common type of police department in Indian Country. Staff in these departments are Federal employees. For many years, patrol officers were under the line authority of the local BIA superintendent (each reservation has a BIA superintendent who oversees all or most of the BIA functions on that reservation), and criminal investigators were under the line authority of the BIA's Division of Law Enforcement Services. Recent changes have placed line authority for patrol under the BIA's Division of Law Enforcement Services as well. Less common are departments that receive funding under the auspices of the self-governance amendments to PL 93-638 and departments that are funded completely with tribal money. These arrangements grant tribes much more control over government functions than is permitted under 638 contracts. A number of tribes rely on State and local authorities for police services under Public Law 83-280, 67 Stat. 588 (1953). This law, passed as part of a larger effort to "terminate" American Indian tribes, gave a number of States the power to enforce the same criminal laws within Indian Country as they did outside of Indian Country. The typical department serves an area the size of Delaware, but with a population of only 10,000, that is patrolled by no more than three police officers and as few as one officer at any one time (a level of police coverage that is much lower than in other urban and rural areas of the country). In other words, the typical setting is a large area with a relatively small population patrolled by a small number of police officers; the superficial description is of a rural environment with rural-style policing. In fact, many reservation residents live in fairly dense communities, which share attributes of suburban and urban areas. Officers who work in Indian Country are almost always graduates of high schools and certified law enforcement training academies; a slight majority are Native American. Eileen Luna and Samuel Walker (1998) offer detailed statistical profiles of these departments. Therefore, our focus is on the core management challenges across the range of departments. While there are many more small departments (approximately 150) than medium-sized or large departments, they serve substantially fewer people--between 25 and 30 percent of all the citizens served by the BIA and tribally administered police departments in Indian Country. These very small departments have at most nine officers. Among the most important challenges facing these departments is providing around-the-clock police coverage to their communities. These departments rarely have more than one officer on duty at any time, and their officers often work without adequate backup. They are true generalists, working across numerous police and administrative functions. There are more than 75 medium-sized police departments in Indian Country, serving over half of the Native Americans living in reservation communities subject to BIA or tribal policing. These departments have from 10 to 50 officers. The key organizational attribute that distinguishes medium-sized departments from small departments is that it is theoretically possible for these departments to provide 24-hour police coverage, even though it may be quite difficult in practical terms. At the high end of the size range, departments can support some specialized activities; not only are some officers free to focus on standard patrol activities, but some may specialize in such areas as substance abuse and domestic violence. This transition signals a staffing level at which specialization can help a department focus on critical strategic issues. Two police departments in Indian Country--those of the Navajo Nation and the Oglala Sioux Tribe--have 100 or more officers. These departments serve about 15 percent of the residents of Indian Country and feature levels of organizational complexity not present in smaller departments. This complexity is driven by increased specialization, more elaborate oversight mechanisms, district-based organization, and other factors. Inadequate funding is an important obstacle to good policing in Indian Country. Existing data suggest that tribes have between 55 and 75 percent of the resource base available to non-Indian communities. But the terms used in this comparison may underestimate the resource needs of Indian Country departments. The appropriate police coverage (police officers per thousand residents) comparison may not be between Indian departments and departments serving communities of similar size, but between Indian departments and communities with similar crime problems. Given that the violent crime rate in Indian Country is between double and triple the national average (Greenfeld and Smith 1999, 2), comparable communities would be large urban areas with high violent crime rates. For example, Baltimore, Detroit, New York City, and Washington, D.C., feature high police-to-citizen ratios, from 3.9 to 6.6 officers per thousand residents (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1998).[1] Few, if any, departments in Indian Country have ratios of more than 2 officers per thousand residents. Crime Trends in Indian Country The threat of increasing crime, particularly violent crime, is especially worrisome because we know far less than we would like about crime in Indian Country. The lack of good data on crime in Indian Country stems from (1) issues of culture, geography, and economics unique to American Indian reservations; (2) the limited administrative and technological resources available to tribal police departments; (3) inadequate coordination between tribal and Federal agencies; and (4) management problems common to both tribal and BIA police departments. Even when it is possible to obtain accurate tribal-level data, the prevalence and character of crime vary widely from reservation to reservation. Our research suggests the following about the general prevalence, distribution, and character of crime on reservations: o The overall workload of police departments in Indian Country has been increasing at a significant rate. In other words, the intensity and range of problems to which police departments in Indian Country must respond appear to be increasing. o Although many Native reservation residents live in rural, isolated areas, a significant percentage of reservation populations has settled in semiurban communities. Much, if not most, crime on reservations occurs in these fairly dense areas. o Notwithstanding the recent reports of dramatic increases in violent crime on reservations, especially among youth, the crimes that most occupy police in Indian Country are directly or indirectly related to alcohol abuse. Alcohol-related crime is a deep and complex problem, which--by contrast to the problem of violent crime--has received insufficient attention (and resources). The State of Policing in Indian Country The typical department that we describe is attempting to cope with an increasing workload (a change driven by rising crime, increased police involvement in the social concerns that relate to crime, and greater community demands for police services) and is doing so with a quite limited resource base. In fact, this characterization only begins to capture the severity and complexity of the challenges to reservation policing. Police in Indian Country function within a complicated jurisdictional web, answer to multiple authorities, may operate without strategic direction from their tribal governments, and often lack a sense of "partnership" with their service populations. In a review of one of the largest police departments in Indian Country, Naranjo and colleagues (1996) both echo and expand on these concerns. They find that-- o Poor employee morale and high turnover result in a lack of well- qualified and experienced officers. o Inadequate budgets, fiscal mismanagement, and even corruption create serious obstacles to the effective delivery of important police services and programs. o Basic departmental management is flawed. o Undue political interference in police operations inhibits the ability of the police to perform their duties in a fair and equitable manner and reduces the credibility of the police in the eyes of the community. Such findings have led many researchers, policymakers, and police professionals to conclude that reservation policing is in crisis. In response, a number of special reports, commissions, conferences, and blue-ribbon committees have grappled with the problems and have produced a wide variety of recommendations and proposals. These include increasing funding, tightening management, clarifying ambiguous reporting relationships, and improving technology. Many of these responses are necessary to improve policing in Indian Country, but we are concerned that they may treat the symptoms, rather than the disease. In particular, we argue that many of the problems with policing in Indian Country, which subsequently affect the quality of policing, are linked in important ways to Federal policy. Strong evidence points to longstanding, cumulative negative effects of Federal policy on the practice of policing in Indian Country. The historical record shows how Federal policy created a system that served the interests of the U.S. government and nontribal citizens and failed to promote the ability of Indian nations to design and exert meaningful control over their own policing institutions. Departments administered by the BIA are not agents of tribes but of the Federal Government and, as such, have limited incentive to look to the communities they serve for legitimacy or for authorization of the police function. Over time, this arrangement has created a significant gap between tribal police and the communities they serve, a gap that is reflected in mismatches between police and community priorities and between police methods and tribal norms and values. We stress that when tribal members do turn to the police with problems, they encounter organizations with priorities that have been shaped by a model of policing that limits their attention to a narrow band of crime problems and police strategies. An emblematic example of this philosophy came from a high BIA official encountered on a site visit who stated, "Law enforcement is law enforcement"--a claim that often exempts Indian police departments from adapting strategies, policies, and procedures to local needs. As a result, disputes, conflicts, and problems that police and citizens see as each other's responsibility can continue to simmer and escalate into real crimes. In addition, as tribal members conclude that the police are insensitive and unresponsive to community needs, their support for the police diminishes. Lessons From Research on Effective Governance in Indian Country A substantial body of research suggests a road map for understanding and beginning to remedy the problems with policing that are rooted in Federal policy. Beginning in the 1970s, a handful of Indian nations embarked on successful paths of social and economic development. Research by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development indicates that the common denominator among these successful tribes was an effective government--one that was capable of both determining and implementing the policy priorities of the community. One indicator of a tribal government's ability to make and implement effective decisions is whether or not it has increased control over its own institutions. Stability, the separation of powers, and competent, respected bureaucracies are further indicators of a tribal government's effectiveness. The research also indicates that an alignment between the form and powers of a government's contemporary institutions and the form and powers of its prereservation institutions is most likely to create this stability, respect, and legitimacy. An important lesson from this research is the effect of increased tribal control over tribal institutions. Only those tribes that have acquired meaningful control over their governing institutions have experienced improvements in local economic and social conditions. The research has not found a single case of sustained economic development where the tribe is not in the driver's seat. While tribal-BIA relationships in thriving Indian nations range from cooperative to contentious, they are all characterized by a demotion of the BIA (and of other Federal agencies) from decisionmaker to advisor and provider of technical assistance. The general point is that self-determined institutions, ones that reflect American Indian nations' sovereignty, are more effective. This lesson has yet to be applied to Indian policing. Federal policies that regulate Indian policing have the twin effect of reducing tribal control and diffusing accountability for institutional performance. Tribes regularly blame Federal agencies for the poor state of policing in Indian Country; not only are the resources provided by Federal agencies inadequate, but Federal policies are driven by a misreading of tribes' real needs and priorities. On the other hand, representatives of Federal agencies express skepticism about the ability and intention of tribes to develop and manage effective police departments. The very fact that power is shared between tribal and Federal authorities allows each to avoid their more appropriate roles and, thus, to perpetuate poor policing. The second relevant lesson for Indian policing from this research is the importance of cultural match. A consonance between present and prereservation institutional forms confers legitimacy on the methods and outcomes of government decisionmaking and channels political energy in productive directions. How do the dynamics of cultural match play out in practical terms? The police officer at Tohono O'odham who aggressively confronts a suspect will have offended longstanding tribal norms and will have failed to draw on them in the service of obtaining the suspect's compliance. By contrast, the police officer at Turtle Mountain or one of the Lakota tribes who fails to confront a suspect is guilty of the same error. To the extent that the ethos of the organization in which these officers work perpetuates such conflicts, both public support for and the effectiveness of the organization are diminished. It is, however, important not to be naive about the possibilities. There are no guarantees that prereservation institutions will be effective in a contemporary setting. If old forms cannot be adapted to modern problems, the challenge becomes to design new ones that both make cultural sense and work. The Possibilities for Community Policing in Indian Country If the roots of the problems with Indian policing lie in Federal policy, and if a road map for remedying these problems is provided by research showing how the effectiveness of other tribal government functions has increased, the question remains: How, exactly, can similar work be accomplished with policing? Community policing may be the answer. Community policing is a method by which communities lend their authority to the police enterprise, see their norms and values reflected in the police mission, and employ their considerable formal and informal resources to address crime. In turn, the strategy enhances the capacity of police to address crime and to help communities become strong, independent, and resourceful. (We emphasize that community policing is not only a set of tactics, such as foot patrol, but also a process by which police partner with communities.) Indeed, the growing body of experience with and research on community policing is remarkably congruent with the findings on effective governing institutions in Indian Country. Community policing gives rise to law enforcement institutions that have the characteristics cited above (self-determination and cultural appropriateness) and such institutions have the potential to substantially improve public safety. Seen in this light, community policing provides a framework that tribes might use to design and implement Native approaches to policing--approaches that should improve the quality of policing in Indian Country and, rather than perpetuate an inappropriate Federal structure, enhance tribal nation building. Our earlier finding--that tribal citizens rely increasingly on their police departments to settle disputes, conflicts, and problems that police themselves do not consistently treat as legitimate crime problems-- reinforces the conclusion. The overarching lesson of community policing is that if reservation police were to pay attention to these problems, and if they were to use credible tribal approaches as remedies, they would become more effective problem solvers, more respected by tribal citizens, and better able to prevent problems that might otherwise escalate. The first step in improving policing in Indian Country, therefore, is to systematically link community values to departmental values and to express these values in concrete operations. For any given Indian nation, the systems that animate and guide policing--such as the organizational structures of the police department, tribal personnel and training systems, local management information and control systems, and departmental policies and procedures--can be linked to a vision of policing shaped by that nation's beliefs, priorities, and resources. The policies and procedures for dispatch offer a useful, concrete example of this nuts-and-bolts linkage between policing systems and tribal priorities. Depending on a dispatcher's assessment of a call, a local elder could accompany a responding officer; in many instances, the officer might be there only to support the elder's authority (or vice versa). Such an effort would lend credibility to the modern police function while showing respect for important tribal traditions. Conclusions and Recommendations Tribes, with the support of the Federal Government, must reconsider the foundations of policing on American Indian reservations. The lessons drawn by tribes, academics, and policymakers from the research on and accumulating experience in community policing and the design of effective governing institutions in Indian Country provide the necessary starting points for tribes as they rethink policing. The same evidence and experience can productively inform the development of Federal policy. Significantly, we do not recommend that policymakers direct their full attention and resources to increasing funding for reservation police departments, developing specialized crime-fighting task forces, and improving technology. Without the core investment in "rethinking policing" that we describe, these efforts do not do enough to help Indian police departments and tribal communities address the problems they face. Similarly, we are not recommending that tribes reflexively resurrect dormant prereservation methods of social control and policing, nor are we giving a blanket endorsement to restorative justice. The challenge is to create workable, nation-specific policing institutions and approaches informed by traditional customs--because they lay the best foundation for improving safety, preventing crime, and promoting the practice of effective policing in Indian Country. Note 1. These rates were calculated from 1996 data found in table 1.28 (p. 39) and table 3.118 (pp. 276-281). ------------------------------ Contents Acknowledgments Executive Summary Chapter 1. Introduction and Overview Study Goals Organization of the Report Overview of Conclusions and Recommendations Chapter 2. Policing in Indian Country: The Context What Is "Indian Country"? Whom Do Police in Indian Country Serve? Who Polices Indian Country? The Criminal Justice System in Indian Country Summary Chapter 3. Crime Trends in Indian Country The Limitations of Indian Country Crime Data The Prevalence, Distribution, and Character of Crime on American Indian Reservations Chapter 4. Organization and Management of Police Departments in Indian Country Characteristics of Departments Serving Indian Country A Closer Look at Four Indian Police Departments Conclusions Chapter 5. Federal Policy and Policing in Indian Country The History of Reservation Policing The Contemporary Problem Research on Effective Governing Institutions in Indian Country Chapter 6. Conclusions and Recommendations Reprise of Research on Effective Governing Institutions The Possibilities for Community Policing in Indian Country What the Federal Government Can Do What Tribes Can Do Conclusion References Appendix A. Study Methodology Appendix B. Survey Respondents and Questionnaires ------------------------------ Chapter 1. Introduction and Overview Study Goals This study had two principal goals. The first was to take a broad look at policing in Indian Country to better understand the many arrangements for administering reservation police departments, develop an initial assessment of the challenges facing Indian policing, and identify policing approaches that might be successful in responding to the growing crime problem in Indian Country. The task was complex, especially because the research literature on policing in Indian Country is limited and the variety of policing arrangements and communities served is considerable. More than 200 police departments serve an even larger number of tribal communities. Most departments are administered by tribes, but some are administered by the Federal Government and some by State and local governments. They range in size from only 2 or 3 officers to more than 200 officers. The communities they serve are as small as the Grand Canyon-based Havasupai Tribe (with a population of only 600) and the Puyallup Tribe (whose 104-acre reservation is part of greater Tacoma, Washington) and as large as the Navajo Nation (with a population of more than 250,000 and a land area larger than the State of Connecticut). Our second goal was to evaluate the prospects for community policing in Indian Country. Could this strategy, which grew out of the experience of police departments in urban settings, be usefully applied to the strikingly different cultural, geographic, and demographic features typical of Indian reservations? Despite their differences, both urban areas and Indian nations face the task of building local capacity to address severe social and economic problems. To the extent that community policing provides an opportunity for communities to develop and employ their own resources, priorities, and values in the service of public safety, it might also help tribes solve their own problems. Therefore, we sought to understand whether some form of community policing might be appropriate in Indian Country. This was an exploratory study. It represents a first effort at characterizing the variety of arrangements for policing in Indian Country, while trying to gain an indepth understanding of the operations of a limited set of representative departments and their tribal contexts. This suggests a third goal: identifying important topics for further research. Given the limited research on policing in Indian Country, the variety of policing arrangements, and the considerable cultural and socioeconomic diversity across tribes, this study can offer only a limited understanding of the dynamics influencing the performance of police departments that serve reservation communities. For example, such topics as law enforcement under Public Law 83-280 (PL 83-280) and the complex problems of criminal jurisdiction and interagency cooperation require separate treatment; these important issues merit comprehensive research. Our primary intent is to provide useful data and guidance to police, policymakers, and tribal leaders. Therefore, this Research Report attempts to balance recommendations for further research with recommendations for near-term actions to address the most pressing concerns. A brief description of the study components can be found in the sidebar "Study Methodology." Appendix A contains a detailed description of the methodology. Organization of the Report This Research Report proceeds in four steps. First we develop the context of policing in Indian Country by introducing the wide variety of socio- economic, cultural, and political conditions that characterize Indian Country and by offering a brief overview of the typical Indian police department. Defining the context in both these ways helps to focus our analysis and our recommendations. Next we describe the crime problems to which these departments must respond, prefacing this description with a discussion of the difficulties in obtaining reliable and useful crime data from Indian Country. Our third step is to address problems of organization and management, beginning with a description of the range of departments in Indian Country and data on reporting structures, staffing, and funding. Specific examples from our site visits give a fuller picture of the primary management challenges that reservation police departments face. The severity of these challenges leads us to consider whether the resource constraints we found adequately explain the problems with policing. Finally, to better understand the problems faced by police departments and the tribal communities they serve, we look to the history of reservation policing and, in particular, to the impact of Federal policy. Overview of Conclusions and Recommendations A central conclusion of this analysis is that Federal policy has failed to promote the ability of Indian nations to design and exert meaningful control over their own policing institutions. Findings from research in Indian Country on the characteristics of effective governing institutions highlight this problem. The research indicates that governing institutions are more effective when they are self-determined and when they reflect, in a functionally meaningful way, a tribe's underlying cultural norms and values (Cornell and Kalt 1995, 1998). Research and experience in community policing are congruent with these findings. The community policing strategy, which involves embedding community priorities and values in the overall function of the police enterprise, enhances the capacity of police to assist communities (Sparrow, Moore, and Kennedy 1990; Kelling and Moore 1988). Together, the findings suggest that pursuing such a strategy would enable Indian communities to lend their authority to the police enterprise, see their norms and values (their culture) reflected in the police mission, employ their considerable formal and informal resources to address crime, and develop more effective policing institutions overall. The first step in improving policing in Indian Country, therefore, is to systematically link community values to departmental values and express these values in concrete operations. For any Indian nation, the systems that animate and guide policing--such as the policies and procedures of the police department, the organizational structures of the police department and overall criminal justice system, the tribal personnel and training systems, the local management information and control systems, and the tribal agencies that conduct strategic planning--can be linked to a vision of policing shaped by that nation's priorities, resources, and needs. These conclusions and recommendations do not address the full range of problems faced by Indian policing. Instead, they focus on a fundamental issue: The tribes, with the support of the Federal Government, must reconsider the foundations of policing on American Indian reservations. Policing in many parts of Indian Country occurs in an environment characterized by serious crime and deteriorating social conditions, a situation that has drawn the attention of politicians, police executives, tribal leaders, and researchers and that suggests that investments in improving policing are urgently needed. The heightened attention and concern are welcome. Policymakers are now thinking harder about how to protect tribal communities from crime and how to better support the efforts of tribal criminal justice agencies. But the very urgency to address violence, gangs, drug-related crime, and substance abuse in Indian Country may have a downside. It may push too quickly toward the conclusion that addressing the problems is simply a matter of obtaining better data on crime, increasing funding, and improving police management. However, these improvements alone are likely to have a limited effect on the ability of tribal communities and the police departments that serve them to independently address the substantial problems they face. Although our research indicates that these inputs are important, it also shows that they do not address the issue most central to effective policing in Indian Country: the challenge of designing Indian police departments as core institutions of tribal government. Thus, we believe that the first priority both for tribal leaders and communities and for law enforcement professionals, politicians, policymakers, and researchers should be to work together to rethink policing in Indian Country. Addressing the fundamental questions of policing will enable them to better understand the situation and develop the kinds of investments (e.g., data, money, technology, technical assistance) that will best serve efforts to improve policing. ------------------------------ Chapter 2. Policing in Indian Country: The Context What is Indian Country, and what do we mean when we refer to Indian reservations and Indian nations? Whom do police in Indian Country serve? What does the typical police department in Indian Country look like (especially, who polices Indian Country)? And finally, what are the basics of the criminal justice system in Indian Country? This section sets the scene for the discussions that follow. What Is "Indian Country"? "Indian Country" comprises the 56 million acres of land owned by Indian communities in the United States.[1] According to the BIA (1998a) there are more than 330 federally recognized Indian tribes in the lower 48 United States. Nearly all tribes have reservations, which are lands the United States "reserved for" tribes in treaties, statutes, or executive orders during the Euro-American western expansion of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries (BIA 1998b). Most of Indian Country is located west of the Mississippi River, but it also includes a number of reservations belonging to tribes in the East. Overall, Indians live on reservations in 34 continental States, and all reservations have some form of policing arrangement (BIA 1998b; Bureau of the Census 1993). Increasingly, tribes are referred to as "nations" to acknowledge their distinct political status vis-a-vis the U.S. Federal and State governments: Indian governments are not part of the Federal hierarchy but, instead, have a government-to-government relationship with the United States (Reno 1995). Under this arrangement, American Indians hold dual citizenship as citizens of both the United States and their Native nation. Because limitations on tribal authority do exist (for example, tribes do not float their own currencies or provide for their own defense), it may be more accurate to describe Indian nations as semisovereign, or "domestic dependent nations," as Chief Justice Marshall did in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (30 U.S. (5 Pet.)1(1831)). Yet, while tribes control a narrower scope of policy than do such nations as Germany and Brazil, they have significantly more scope for policymaking than cities or even U.S. States. Indian nations adopt constitutions for their societies, write civil laws to regulate conduct and commerce within their territorial boundaries, and enforce those laws with their own judicial systems. In brief, modern tribes exercise substantial, but not complete, rights of self-determination and self-government. Whom Do Police in Indian Country Serve? In 1995, the BIA estimated a non-Alaska service population (the number of Natives living on or very near reservations) of 1.1 million. Other estimates are higher. Using data from the 1990 census and a historical growth factor, the Indian Health Service (1997) estimated a 1996 non- Alaska service population of more than 1.3 million, which would rise by more than 100,000 by the year 2000. These differences reflect difficulties in enumerating the reservation-based Indian population, the high birth rates that are typical on many reservations, and in some cases, in- migration. Improved economic opportunities are the primary cause of in-migration in the Indian communities where it is occurring, but such positive economic changes are the exception rather than the rule. In particular, the perception that Native Americans are generally enjoying increased prosperity as a result of the growth of the gaming industry is mistaken. According to the Government Accounting Office (1997), almost half of all gaming revenues earned in 1995 were generated by only 8 of the 184 gaming tribes. Thus, despite new tribal opportunities and ventures, American Indians remain the poorest minority in the United States. Those living in reservation communities, commonly characterized by severe unemployment (sometimes reaching 80 to 90 percent[2]) and the attendant social and economic symptoms of poverty, are the worst off of all (see, for example, Kilborn 1992). Important education and health outcomes also are poor. For example, as of 1990, the high school completion rate among reservation-resident Natives age 25 and over was 54 percent; the national rate for all races was 78 percent (Bureau of the Census 1993, 312, table 7; 1998, 158, table 243). Rates of alcoholism among American Indians are extraordinarily high, and even higher than for other minorities, who are themselves at increased risk of alcohol abuse (see, for example, Greenfeld 1998). Consequently, the rates among Natives of alcohol-related health problems--chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, fetal alcohol syndrome--are much higher than for other population groups. Indexes of social dysfunction, such as suicide and homicide, are also much higher than for either the general population or other minority populations; for instance, the suicide rate is almost triple that of the general population (Indian Health Service 1997). Even so, many Indian nations are experiencing significant countertrends. For example, through aggressive economic development and effective governance, unemployment among the Mississippi Choctaw fell from 80 percent in the early 1980s to virtually zero in 1996; average family income increased approximately sevenfold, to $22,000, during the same period (Bordewich 1996). The Gila River Indian Community was able to provide funding to more than 200 college students in the late 1990s, as opposed to only a handful earlier in the decade. This support will dramatically increase the percentage of community members who are recorded as college graduates in the next census.[3] In sum, Indian Country comprises a striking variety of economic and social conditions and characteristics. An important additional type of variation is the substantial cultural diversity found among American Indian communities. Although "American Indian" is a single race category on the U.S. Census, this grouping hides the fact that members of one tribe can be as different from members of another tribe as citizens of Greece are from citizens of Vietnam. Certainly, tribes' geographic dispersion is one source of diversity. Peoples sharing similar natural surroundings developed somewhat similar cultures and related languages; tribal subgroups then refined the common culture in distinct ways, which gave rise to a wide variety of cultures throughout Indian Country. One rough categorization of these differences separates the Indians of the continental United States into five cultural-geographic groups: o Farmers of the eastern forests. o Nomadic hunters of the plains and prairies. o Farmers and herders of the Southwest. o Seed gatherers of California and the intermountain Great Basin. o Ocean and river fishermen of the Northwest (Driver 1969; Waldman 1985). Another method for classifying Native Americans' cultural diversity is based on language. Early studies found more than 70 distinct linguistic families and isolates among some 250 North American Indian languages. However, with the extinction of some languages and reclassification of others, linguists now group most extant North American Indian languages into six primary families: o Eskimo and Aleut (Far North). o Algonquian (various tribes in the eastern forests, the Plains, and the Far West). o Athabascan and related languages (the Mackenzie-Yukon Basin, the Navajos in the Southwest, and some West Coast peoples). o Uto-Aztecan and related languages (the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains area, the Plains, and the majority of the Pueblos). o Chinookan and related languages (several scattered Far Western tribes). o Siouan and related languages (people in such disparate regions as the Northeast, the Southeast, the Plains, New Mexico, and northern California).[4] Languages within the six families display linguistic similarities, but in practice they are mutually unintelligible, a fact that reinforces cultural differences. Despite decades of suppression and English assimilation, Native language use may now be on the upswing.[5] Thus, the extraordinary cultural variation among historical Indian nations is, and should continue to be, an important distinguishing factor among modern Indian nations. Finally, the history and politics of place also contribute to distinct cultural identities. As reservations were created, members of several indigenous groups were sometimes assigned to one locality; conversely, members of some large indigenous groups were located on several land bases. Over time, the people of each reservation experienced unique struggles. These historical, geographical, and cultural-linguistic differences together support the proposition that the resident community of each of these 330- plus, unique "nations" is the most appropriate group to undertake policymaking and problem solving. Who Polices Indian Country? The array of administrative arrangements for policing in Indian Country is complex (see exhibit 1). Members of the police departments that serve reservation communities may be tribal, Federal, State, county, or municipal employees. Tribal or Public Law 93-638 Policing The most common administrative arrangement is for police departments to be organized under the auspices of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. Also known as Public Law 93-638 (PL 93-638), this law gives tribes the opportunity to assume responsibility for many programs previously administered by the Federal Government by contracting with the BIA (Canby 1998, 30-31). Thus, these police departments are administered by tribes under contract with the BIA Division of Law Enforcement Services. Typically, a 638 contract establishes the department's organizational framework and performance standards and provides basic funding for the police function. Officers and nonsworn staff of 638 contract departments are tribal employees. Tribes have used the Self-Determination Act quite aggressively to acquire increased control of their police departments. In 1995, for example, 88 departments (nearly half of the non-Public Law 83-280 tribes) were administered under the auspices of PL 93-638. BIA Administration Departments administered by the BIA are the second most common type of police department in Indian Country. Staff in these departments are Federal employees and are part of a national, BIA-employed hierarchy of law enforcement officers. For many years, patrol officers were under the line authority of the local BIA superintendent (each reservation has a BIA superintendent who oversees all or most BIA functions on that reservation), and criminal investigators were under the line authority of the BIA Division of Law Enforcement Services. Recent changes have placed line authority for patrol under the BIA Division of Law Enforcement Services as well. In 1995, 64 departments (slightly more than one-third of the non-PL 83- 280 tribes) were administered by the BIA. Self-Governance Policing and Tribally Funded Departments By far less common than the types described above, but significant nevertheless, are departments that receive funding under the auspices of the self-governance amendments to Public Law 93-638 and departments that receive complete funding from tribal coffers. Like tribes with 638ed police departments, tribes with self-governance arrangements contract (except in this case, the terminology is to "compact") with the BIA to assume responsibility for law enforcement services that might otherwise be performed by the BIA. The primary difference between contracting under PL 93-638 and compacting under its self-governance amendments is that financing is through a block grant, rather than as payment for budgeted line items. These contractual requirements and funding mechanisms grant tribes much more control over government functions than is permitted under 638 contracts. In 1995, 22 Indian police departments (approximately 12 percent of the non-PL 83- 280 tribes) were administered through self-governance. Although tribes achieve a high degree of organizational freedom through self-governance compacts, tribes that fully fund their own police departments gain near-complete tribal control of their law enforcement institutions. Given resource constraints in Indian Country, however, only four of the non-PL 83-280 tribes had tribally funded departments in 1995. Public Law 83-280 Policing A number of tribes rely on State and local authorities for police services under Public Law 83-280, 67 Stat. 588 (1953). This law, passed as part of a larger effort to "terminate" American Indian tribes, gave California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin, and (later) Alaska the power to enforce the same criminal laws within Indian Country as they did outside of Indian Country. The law also "provided that any other state could assume such jurisdiction by statute or state constitutional amendment," and many did so (Canby 1998, 27; Barker 1998, 46-49). With the advent of the Federal policy of self-determination in the 1970s, some States retroceded policing responsibility back to tribes. Nonetheless, a significant number of Indian communities still rely on State and local police services, which usually are paid for by the surrounding, and generally larger, non- Indian community. The number of tribes subject to policing through PL 83-280 is fairly static and relatively large (for example, it includes many of the more than 100 tribes in California). We have excluded them from this study, which focuses on tribes that either police themselves or have a present opportunity to do so. Often, PL 83-280 tribes have rather small populations or limited land bases, characteristics that make self-policing much more difficult. We agree with other researchers, however, that, despite these constraints, PL 83-280 tribes should have an opportunity to determine the policing arrangement that best serves their members (Goldberg and Singleton 1998). The complexity of these issues merits separate, comprehensive treatment. Other Administrative Arrangements To this already complicated picture, we must add several more possibilities. First, tribes can contract with the BIA for individual police functions. Therefore, some departments will have a tribal patrol function and a BIA criminal investigation function. Second, an increasing number of departments include both tribally employed and BIA-employed patrol officers. The Community Oriented Policing Service (COPS) program[6] is one driving force behind this mix. Its grants provide funding for new local-level officers, who cannot be Federal employees. Thus, tribes that receive COPS grants but have BIA-administered departments have had to hire officers under tribal auspices. The Typical Department in Indian Country Despite the complexity of administrative arrangements, it is possible to construct a rough portrait of the typical police department serving Indian Country. This sketch is a step toward developing a general understanding of the context of policing in Indian Country. The data for this portrait come from the approximately 40 respondents to our survey of the 67 largest tribes (66 largest departments) located in the continental United States. The typical department is administered either by the tribe through a 638 contract or by the BIA. It has 32 employees (of whom approximately 9 are civilians, 6 are detention officers, 16 are police officers, and 1 to 3 are command staff). Given the around-the-clock nature of policing, the numbers imply that the typical department has only a few officers on duty at any one time. The sworn officers are high school graduates and graduates of certified law enforcement training academies. A slight majority are Native American. The typical department polices a reservation land area of 500,000 acres and serves approximately 10,000 tribal members.[7] Therefore, the typical setting is a large land area with a relatively small population patrolled by a small number of police officers, and the superficial description is of a rural environment with rural-style policing. In fact, substantial numbers of reservation residents live in fairly dense communities that share attributes of suburban and urban areas. Nonetheless, the figures are roughly equivalent to an area the size of Delaware, but with a population of only 10,000 that is patrolled by no more than three police officers (and as few as one officer) at any one time--a level of police coverage that is much lower than in other urban and rural areas of the country. The typical department has an operating budget of approximately $1 million per year, which also is less than its rural counterparts and much less than the typical urban police department. In keeping with this limited resource base, the facilities and equipment that support such a department are generally old: The department typically is housed in a building that is 20 or more years old and relies on a vehicle fleet that is at least 3 years old. The Criminal Justice System in Indian Country The components of the criminal justice system in Indian Country are similar to those of non-Indian communities throughout the country. The primary components are the judiciary, the prosecutorial and defense bars, the correctional system (including probation), and the police. However, the complex jurisdictional arrangements in Indian Country mean that for nearly every serious crime, the U.S. Attorney and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have potential jurisdiction. This is markedly different from the situation in non-Indian communities: On reservations, Federal agencies play a potentially broad role in the operation of what is essentially a local criminal justice system. Although the arrangements may vary from reservation to reservation, three factors always come into play in determining criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country. These factors tend to narrow tribal jurisdiction and expand either State or Federal jurisdiction over a wide range of crimes: o Where the crime was committed. Only crimes committed in Indian Country, on trust land, fall under the jurisdiction of tribes. All crimes committed outside of Indian Country, even if they involve American Indians, fall under State or Federal jurisdiction. o Who committed the crime (Indian or non-Indian). For tribal jurisdiction, the alleged offender must be an American Indian. Sometimes, however, even Indians who are not members of the tribe on whose reservation the crime occurred may be exempt from that tribe's jurisdiction. Regardless of the nature of the crime or the location in which it occurred, non-Indians are not under the criminal jurisdiction of tribes. o What crime was committed. As a result of the Major Crimes Act of 1885 (18 U.S.C.A. section 1153) and the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 (25 U.S.C.A. section 1302(7)), tribes have jurisdiction only over less serious crimes. Most serious crimes--including murder, manslaughter, arson, burglary, and robbery--fall under the jurisdiction of Federal authorities. However, some tribes have found ways to exercise increased authority over the investigation and adjudication of more serious crimes.[8] Other attributes of the criminal justice system in Indian Country that often are highlighted by experts in the field and are relevant to this discussion include the following: o Like police departments in Indian Country, other Indian Country criminal justice agencies suffer from major resource constraints (see Odum 1991). o Indian Country has a greater representation of nonprofessionals in the judiciary and the prosecution and defense bars than non-Indian communities do (see Melton 1998). o Indian Country has a severe shortage of jail space and correctional treatment programs, particularly with regard to substance abuse (Office of the Inspector General 1996). Summary The context for policing in Indian Country can be summarized as follows: o The communities served are aptly described as nations, and these nations exhibit an exceptionally wide variety of social, economic, and cultural characteristics. Even so, most Indian nations face severe social and economic problems. o Departments serving most residents of Indian Country are administered either by the BIA or by tribes through a contractual arrangement with the BIA. o Departments have limited resources with which to accomplish their mission. This is exemplified by the typical department, which patrols a large land area with a small number of police officers, works with older equipment and facilities, and depends on a relatively small operating budget. o The criminal justice system within which departments operate is similar to that of non-Indian communities, except for the stricter limits on tribal jurisdiction and the more prominent role of Federal agencies. Notes 1. Indian Country was defined by the U.S. Congress in 1948 (18 U.S.C.A. section 151) as "a) all land within the limits of any Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the United States government, notwithstanding the issuance of any patent, and, including rights-of-way running through the reservation, b) all dependent Indian communities within the borders of the United States whether within the original or subsequently acquired territory thereof, and whether within or without the limits of a state, and c) all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished, including rights-of-way running through the same." See Canby (1998, 113-114). 2. See, for example, Bureau of Indian Affairs (1996). To be counted as "unemployed" in BIA's calculation of the unemployment rate, an individual must be seeking work. But given limited opportunities, many reservation residents may have given up the search. A calculation that includes these "discouraged workers" is probably more accurate than the standard calculation of the employment rate, which leads to unemployment estimates in the 80- to 90-percent range for some reservation communities. 3. Personal interview with the Director of the Gila River Indian Community Department of Education, October 29, 1998. 4. For example, see Driver (1969, 43-45), who bases his table on Voegelin and Voegelin (1966). 5. The Native American Languages Acts of 1990 (PL 101-477) and 1992 (PL 102-254) are examples of the renewed interest in Native language. These laws, which articulate a U.S. Government policy of protecting indigenous languages, were passed at the express request of Native groups. 6. The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) in the U.S. Department of Justice is "responsible for advancing community policing, including the hiring of 100,000 additional community policing officers" (quoted from the COPS Web page, http://www.usdoj.gov/cops/gpa/default.htm). 7. The average acreage calculation--based on survey data, not on the entire universe of reservations--excludes the Navajo reservation, which is atypically large. The average population estimate does not derive from survey data, but rather, was reported to us by members of the Executive Committee for Indian Country Law Enforcement Improvements. It may substantially overestimate the actual number of tribal members served by the typical department. Data from the U.S. Census, the Bureau of Indian Affairs Labor Force Survey, and the tribes themselves suggest that the figure may be as low as 6,000. The simple and unfortunate fact is that data on the Native population actually served by police in Indian Country are of limited reliability. Indeed, the range of difference reported here suggests that researchers and policymakers must be especially wary of "per capita" estimates (for example, policing resources per tribal member served) and of policy recommendations that depend heavily on these figures; they can be made to say many things. This issue is discussed in greater detail in chapter 4. 8. For example, tribal police and prosecutors sometimes charge alleged criminals with misdemeanors (over which Indian nations have jurisdiction) in addition to (or instead of) felonies (over which Indian nations do not have jurisdiction); this allows the community to keep the alleged criminal within the tribal system or seek some remedy, even when the Federal system is too overburdened to pursue prosecution. ------------------------------ Chapter 3. Crime Trends in Indian Country The Limitations of Indian Country Crime Data General Remarks In recent years, policymakers and law enforcement professionals have become increasingly concerned that crime, particularly violent crime, is increasing rapidly on American Indian reservations. (See, for example, Claiborne 1998; Executive Committee for Indian Country Law Improvements 1997; Mydans 1995; and "Why Does Violent Crime on Indian Lands Soar" 1997.) The problem is all the more worrisome because we know far less than we would like about crime in Indian Country (on the tribal, regional, and national levels) (Executive Committee 1997; Clark 1996b). Broadly, the lack of accurate data on crime in Indian Country can be attributed to the underreporting of crime. More specific reasons for the lack of accurate crime data include issues of culture, geography, and economics unique to American Indian reservations; the limited administrative and technological resources available to tribal police departments; inadequate coordination between tribal and Federal agencies; and management problems common to both tribal and BIA police departments.[1] Furthermore, even when it is possible to obtain accurate tribal-level data, multiple complex factors cause the prevalence and character of crime to vary widely from reservation to reservation, a fact that strongly cautions against using data from a few tribes as a basis for projecting overall trends. For example, during 1995 at least 15 homicides occurred on the Gila River reservation, a community with a robust economy and a population of approximately 10,000 (Clark 1996b). In contrast, the Oglala Sioux--a much larger tribe (40,000) that is plagued with serious social problems and a struggling economy--had only one homicide during a similar period. Equally dramatic contrasts can be found throughout Indian Country. Policymakers and law enforcement professionals frequently focus on the obstacles to formulating effective anticrime strategies (Luna 1998). While the information is useful, this focus tends to obscure much that is known about crime and its context in Indian Country--information that might be immediately useful to policymakers, law enforcement professionals, and tribal leadership. Therefore, although this report discusses the factors contributing to a lack of accurate data on crime in Indian Country, it also draws attention to what is known and what that information suggests about the strategies available for addressing crime on American Indian reservations. Reasons for Poor Crime Data in Indian Country The underreporting of crime on reservations occurs on two levels: between reservation citizens and their police agencies and between these tribal- level police agencies and such Federal agencies as the FBI and the BIA. On the first level, underreporting is attributable to cultural and demographic factors that are highly characteristic of Indian Country. The extensive research literature on underreporting of crime cites distrust of police, the shame or humiliation associated with certain kinds of crime, and fear of retaliation as strong predictors of underreporting (Skogan 1977; Wasserman 1998). These factors are unusually common in Native American communities. In many, there is a longstanding distrust of law enforcement authorities. On social, cultural, and even political levels, the issues of shame and fear of retaliation are also present. Tribal members underreport because of the shame associated with such crimes as child abuse, child neglect, and domestic violence; because of their fear that the (typically) small, intimate reservation community will be unable to protect those who report such crimes; and because close and complicated family and clan relationships among victims, offenders, and police officers discourage reporting.[2] Unfortunately, these causes of underreporting of crime are exacerbated by other characteristics of reservation life (see Silverman 1996). For example, geographic isolation from police departments and from tribal social service agencies heightens the fear of retaliation that victims of family violence may have and further discourages reporting. On some reservations, this fear is increased even more by a lack of ready access to telephone service in isolated or poor villages. Data from the 1990 Census show that "the majority of American Indian homes on reservations (53 percent) did not have a telephone." By comparison, only 9 percent of nonmetropolitan households in the U.S. population overall did not have a phone (Bureau of the Census 1995, 1). Finally, in those tribes where traditional means of dispute resolution and social norm enforcement have declined, but where new methods--like police intervention--are not readily available or are not viewed as legitimate or effective by the tribal community, many crimes may never come to the attention of police authorities.[3] The second level at which underreporting occurs originates with reservation police departments. Even if citizens report crimes or crimes are otherwise made known to police departments, data are either not collected or not forwarded to Federal agencies. Four problems, most of which are associated with the small size of typical police departments in Indian Country, play the greatest role in this level of underreporting: staff shortages and time constraints, limited data-collection capacities, competing Federal and local priorities, and problems with department administration and management. Because the small size of police departments in Indian Country places time constraints on staff, data collection is extremely expensive relative to the overall budget of the department. Police officers and other staff in the departments we visited referred to themselves as generalists and commented that the time needed for specialized administrative tasks competes with, and often loses out to, fighting crime and providing emergency services. When police officers also must serve as jail staff, as is the case in approximately 50 percent of all departments surveyed, their time is stretched even further. Simply put, because these small departments cannot afford to dedicate staff to any specialized function, the cost of data collection and analysis is much greater than it is for larger departments. Small departments serving small communities often lack systematic methods for collecting and analyzing crime data. Like other observers, we found that many Indian Country police departments do not have automated call management (i.e., 911 systems) and data collection and analysis systems; survey results suggest that approximately half of the departments lack them. In several tribes we visited, data regarding crime reports and arrests could be collected only by reviewing handwritten records, and even this level of effort was not always possible, because written records were not consistently maintained. There seem to be two reasons for the limited amount of automation--Indian police departments' scant resources, which have made the purchase of such systems prohibitively expensive, and the small size of typical reservation communities, which for many years did not require sophisticated call and data management capacity for adequate policing. As tribal populations and crime both increased,[4] Indian police departments suddenly found themselves far behind their larger, urban counterparts (and somewhat behind their comparable rural counterparts) in building such systems.[5] An additional complication, related to the problem above, is that even some departments with automated systems for data collection and analysis cannot maximize the benefits of these systems, since the departments do not have staff trained to use them to their full advantage. Even when data are collected, the reporting of data (and the referral of cases) by tribal departments to Federal agencies has been problematic. As recently as 1996, for example, one northern plains tribe reported no major crimes of any kind to Federal officials for several months--a precipitous and unlikely decrease over the previous period.[6] In large part, the problem arises because of competing local and Federal priorities, which means that individual Indian police departments have little or no incentive to report data on major felonies. Because the communities they police tend to be small and highly interconnected, officers already have a good sense of the prevalence of serious crimes, and it is difficult for them to see how an official compilation of data would provide any better information. Because Indian police officers spend so much more time on routine patrol activities than they do on the crimes covered by Federal reporting requirements, reporting may appear fairly unimportant to them. And, if tribal police think that Federal agencies give low priority to the prosecution of crimes that occur on reservations, they may believe that reporting serves no purpose.[7] Unfortunately, while the impact on individual tribes may be negligible, the failure to report or refer these serious crimes has important implications for understanding the prevalence and distribution of crime on regional and national levels. Such data might be very useful, for example, in understanding crime on reservations close to urban areas or near international borders where the illegal activity associated with urban gangs, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration might follow significant regional or national patterns.[8] Problems with department administration and management also stymie the collection and reporting of reservation crime data. Chapter 4 discusses these issues, but one example can illustrate how such problems (striking in their triviality but alarming in their frequency) work against the efficient collection of useful crime data. In this case, the many police districts in the department of a large plains tribe were required to submit incident report records to the department headquarters on a fixed date each month. Districts were notoriously late with their submissions, but the response was neither to modify deadlines nor to work with districts to improve reporting. Instead, late information was simply discarded.[9] As a result, this information was unavailable to the tribe and to Federal agencies for purposes of planning and management. The Prevalence, Distribution, and Character of Crime on American Indian Reservations Given the above constraints on developing a detailed, accurate analysis of crime trends, this section describes what the general prevalence, distribution, and character of crime on reservations suggest about the evolving role of police in Indian Country. Three factors appear most important. First, although it is difficult to accurately describe crime trends in Indian Country, the overall workload of police departments in Indian Country has been increasing at a significant rate. In other words, the intensity and range of problems to which police departments in Indian Country must respond appear to be increasing. Second, many Native reservation residents live in rural, isolated areas and the resources and technologies available to effectively police these areas are in short supply. These conditions tend to obscure the fact that many other Native reservation residents have settled in semiurban communities and much, if not most, crime on reservations occurs in these fairly dense communities. Crime in these areas may be amenable to well-developed, tested strategies adapted from urban contexts. Third, notwithstanding the recent reports of dramatic increases in violent crime on reservations, especially among youth, the crimes that most occupy police in Indian Country (as measured by calls for service, incident reports, and arrests) are directly or indirectly related to alcohol abuse. Alcohol-related crime is a deep and complex problem that--in contrast to the problem of violent crime--has received insufficient attention. The Increasing Workload of Police Departments in Indian Country The workload of police departments in Indian Country is increasing at a significant rate. General evidence of this trend comes from our survey data, brief site visits, and four intensive site visits. Specific evidence is given in exhibits 2-5, which approximate the increase in calls for service, incident reports, and arrests from the Tohono O'odham Nation, the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation. The Tohono O'odham data (exhibits 2 and 3) show an average annual increase between 1994 and 1996 of more than 20 percent in incident reports and nearly 30 percent in arrests. During that period, not only the overall pressure on the department increased, but also the workload of individual officers because the number of sworn officers remained relatively constant. The Three Affiliated Tribes' data (exhibit 4) show an average annual increase in arrests of more than 30 percent between 1992 and 1994. As at Tohono O'odham, this led to an increased demand for service from individual officers, since the increase in calls for service and arrests outpaced the expansion of the Fort Berthold department staff.[10] The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' data (exhibit 5) show an average annual increase of 15 percent in calls for service and 45 percent in cited offenses from fiscal year 1992 to fiscal year 1996. Several new officers were hired in fiscal year 1995, but again, not in proportion to the additional workload. Anecdotal evidence suggests that these workload increases are partly due to increases in serious crime and emergencies on reservations. But other simple explanations should not be overlooked. For example, unlike many smaller Indian police departments, the Tohono O'odham department has a 911 system; the community's growing reliance on 911 is a strong contributing factor to the increase in calls for service. These systems may be a broader cause of the increased workload we observed across Indian Country. As Indian police departments implement automated call management, they may be experiencing the surge in high-priority calls and heightened demand that urban departments experienced when they established 911 systems (Sparrow, Moore, and Kennedy 1990). For the Confederated Salish and Kootenai department, the large increase in demand from fiscal year 1994 to 1995 occurred as a result of "retrocession," by which the State of Montana ceded control over reservation policing to the tribe. (This change is discussed in greater depth in chapter 4.) While this was a fairly dramatic increase in tribal control, in which a tribe subject to the authority of PL 83-280 regained its former rights, other Indian nations also are increasing their jurisdictional sweep, largely through cross-deputization agreements. Thus, another simple cause of Indian police departments' increased workload is increased authority over the offenses committed within reservation boundaries. Yet, there is good reason to believe that the increased workload in Indian police departments is not simply the result of rising serious crime and emergencies, the greater availability of 911 services, or expanded jurisdictional rights. It also appears that communities are placing new demands on police departments to respond more frequently and more rapidly to a broad range of problems. Many researchers have asserted that tribal communities have become less and less reliant on traditional methods of problem or conflict resolution and more reliant on the police (for example, Nielsen 1996; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996). Our observations support this conclusion. For example, at Tohono O'odham, not only has the demand for police services increased, but, in recent years, there has also been a steady increase in the tribal advocates' caseloads;[11] by 1996, each of the 10 advocates handled approximately 500 cases per year, an estimate that does not include the cases handled by private attorneys and other legal services providers on the reservation. Similarly, defense advocates at Gila River reported that they stopped accepting traffic cases (misdemeanor violations of tribal traffic laws) in the early 1990s because so many more serious cases filled their dockets. The Geographic Distribution of Reservation Crime The argument is often made that the unique demographics and geography of Indian Country require uniquely rural approaches to crime prevention and control. In general, however, researchers and police professionals have found that such strategies are not as well developed as those for urban areas (Weisheit, Wells, and Falcone 1995). Most rural strategies leave unsolved the problem of how to provide adequate police coverage to widely spread communities (for example, Cordner 1994). Police professionals in Indian Country often describe how a single call from an outlying area of a large reservation can take an officer out of service for several hours, perhaps even a full day. That creates a serious coverage problem for departments in which only one to three officers are on duty at any one time. Conversely, it is often underemphasized that while many reservation residents live in isolated rural areas, a significant number have settled in semiurban townships and villages, and much, if not most, crime on reservations occurs in these more densely populated areas. At Tohono O'odham, for example, half of the reservation's population of 14,000 lives in Sells, Arizona, but considerably more than 50 percent of the incidents that officers initiated or responded to in 1995 and 1996 took place there. In addition, officers estimated that of these calls, the majority originated in two relatively small U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) neighborhoods known as the "rentals," while another 18 percent originated in a small urban area near the city of Tucson. At Fort Berthold, approximately 1,500 of the almost 2,000 arrests made by the police department in 1994 were made in the relatively densely populated New Town district, an area that is home to 50 percent of the reservation's total population. Gila River police officers also identified the HUD rental developments in Sacaton and St. Johns as high-crime/frequent-call areas, and officers at Flathead identified a crowded trailer park in one small reservation town as a particularly troublesome site. In such areas, police quite possibly could use strategies developed for urban areas effectively and efficiently. In addition to their semiurban character, these neighborhoods exhibit numerous and unmistakable signs of decay and abandonment that invite crime (Wilson and Kelling 1982). This is not from the casual disorder that may be a cultural variant and not necessarily a reliable indicator that an area has in some significant way been abandoned by local residents and authorities. As noted above, crime in the town of Sells on the Tohono O'odham reservation and in the towns of Sacaton and St. Johns on the Gila River reservation is most prevalent in rundown public housing areas that share many attributes of urban public housing developments. At Tohono O'odham, the rentals contrast dramatically with a nearby immaculate and orderly village, Big Fields, in which very little crime occurs; tribal police officers reported that they rarely patrol Big Fields, simply because crime is so low there and, in any event, residents "look out for each other." In a HUD housing development on the Flathead reservation, crime and disorder dropped precipitously when residents mowed lawns, cleaned up the neighborhood, and reported illegal or suspicious activities to police. These results are similar to results in urban neighborhoods when residents take an active stand against physical disorder, abandonment, and decay. Again, strategies that have proven useful in urban areas also might be applicable to dense reservation housing areas. In sum, analysis of the geographic distribution of crime on reservations suggests that useful means of addressing crime in urban areas--strategies such as community policing, which have led to interventions like Boston's Operation Ceasefire, and other fruitful problem-solving approaches, such as those that have led to the eradication of open-air drug markets--are underused or at least undertested in Indian Country. Indeed, such approaches might have particular promise in reservation housing projects, since their limited size and population might permit police to more easily develop detailed and expert knowledge of key community characteristics, which is vital for successful problem solving. Alcohol-Related Crime in Indian Country In spite of recent reports of dramatic increases in violent crime in Indian Country, particularly youth violence (Clark 1996a; Goldblatt 1998; Weyerman 1998),[12] the crimes that most occupy police in Indian Country are directly or indirectly related to alcohol abuse (Gossage and May 1998; Indian Health Service 1997). Identifying alcohol abuse as a leading problem in Indian Country is not new, and the "finding" may sound trite. But this conclusion was stated by tribal members, tribal leaders, and tribal police officers, and we are simply reporting it here. In particular, the conclusion that alcohol-related crime is the leading crime problem in Indian Country is based on evidence from our surveys and site visits. Across all survey responses, for example, the constellation of crimes that were directly related to alcohol abuse (such as driving under the influence (DUI), the sale of alcohol to minors, and drunk and disorderly conduct) or were indirectly related to alcohol abuse (such as domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, and assault) constituted the leading category of calls for service, incident reports, and arrests. Also, the great majority of police officers and administrators, tribal leaders, and community members who were interviewed cited alcohol abuse as the single biggest challenge facing their departments and communities. The commanding officer at Fort Berthold, for example, estimated that 90 percent of his department's calls for service were driven by some form of alcohol abuse. Similarly, an acting commanding officer at Gila River estimated that 98 percent of calls there were alcohol-related. While it did not focus on reservation residents but on American Indians overall, a recent Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) study provides additional evidence of these claims. Analysis of victimization data shows that "American Indian victims of violence were the most likely of all races of victims to indicate that the offender committed the offense while drinking." Also, "the 1997 arrest rate among American Indians for alcohol-related offenses was more than double that found among all races," although drug arrest rates were lower than average (Greenfeld and Smith 1999, vi-vii). Alcohol abuse is a difficult problem, and police involvement is only one part of the solution to alcohol-related crime. Community members realize this as well. For instance, the director of the Gila River Indian Community Department of Social Services expressed a belief that a comprehensive community strategy for combating alcohol abuse was the only way that further inroads could be made against crime and other social problems associated with alcohol abuse. Members of the Gila River Youth Council reported that they helped found a local Boys and Girls Club so that young children living in homes where alcohol abuse was common could have more positive role models. In other words, tribal community leaders acknowledge the need for broad-based and creative solutions. Yet it is also the case that police departments in Indian Country are not organized to deal most effectively with alcohol-related crime. For example, although many departments have drug task forces, largely funded through Federal programs, these focus on "harder" drugs than alcohol. Among the Salish and Kootenai, for example, drug task force officers focused on methamphetamine, which was being transported and marketed via the reservation, but largely to non-Natives. Site visits found no evidence of similar comprehensive planning and deterrence programs that deal with alcohol-related crime. If such programs exist, they are rare. Perhaps more so than other crime categories, alcohol-related crime reflects an entire nexus of social problems and, as the director of social services at Gila River attested, it requires broad solutions. However, at one site we visited, when asked for directions to the Department of Social Services, police department officials provided directions to a building that the agency had not occupied for a year. The lack of basic connections to such a vital partner as Social Services signals that the police are not organized to respond to the dire problem of alcohol-related crime. Notes 1. The problem of data collection with regard to criminal justice issues and agencies in Indian Country is widely noted by researchers and policymakers. See, for example, Elias (1998). 2. Many of these problems are not unique to Indian Country but are common to the small, tightly knit communities of rural areas across the country. See, for example, Weisheit, Wells, and Falcone (1995). 3. See Judicature 79(3)(1995), a special issue entitled "Indian Tribal Courts and Justice," especially, Ada Pecos Melton, "Indigenous Justice Systems and Tribal Society," 126-133. 4. We note again that tribal populations are growing at a much faster rate than the overall U.S. population (see Indian Health Service 1997) and that some reservation communities report the return of tribal members as a result of improved economic opportunities. Some interviewees also speculated that there was a relationship between return migration and crime; they posited that, having lived away from the stabilizing influence of culture and extended family, returning members had an increased predisposition to crime. 5. Of course, the lack of automated call management and data collection systems is not unique to Indian Country. Whether or not a police department has such a system is determined to a significant degree by the size and location (urban vs. rural) of the department. Virtually all the departments serving U.S. cities of 50,000 or more have some kind of 911 system, but in 1993, only 70 percent of the departments serving communities of fewer than 10,000 had one (or used an existing system in partnership with a local law enforcement agency, such as a sheriff's department or the State police), and that percentage decreases further with the size of the community served. The situation is similar with regard to computerized data management. While nearly all the departments in the country that serve populations over 10,000 have a data management system, in 1993 only 39 percent of the departments serving communities smaller than 2,500 had one (Reaves 1996). In this context, the lack of 911 systems in Indian Country seems less dramatic, but the point remains that without methods for systematically collecting and analyzing crime data, Indian police departments will tend to underreport crime. 6. Interview with Ted Quasula, chief of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Law Enforcement Services, December 1997. 7. On the other hand, Federal agencies complain that tribes do not refer cases in a timely manner (thus, evidence is not fresh and witnesses are difficult to locate or their memory has faded) or that preliminary preparation of the cases has not been adequate. Both the tribal and Federal problems are widely reported. See, for example, the Native American Subcommittee, House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee (1997). 8. These reporting problems exist not only between tribal and Federal law enforcement agencies, but also between tribal criminal justice agencies. For example, in several of the systems we studied in depth, the juvenile division of the tribal courts compiled data on juvenile crime but did not regularly pass it on to the tribal police department--either because the police never asked for it or because the police department rarely used the information for planning purposes. 9. Problems with this department were widely reported in Indian Country Today. See, for example, Roach (1997) and Melmer and Roach (1997). Also see the report by Naranjo et al. (1996). 10. Since 1996, both departments have significantly expanded, in part due to COPS funding. While new staff have improved these departments' response to the increased demand for police services, the rapid personnel expansion has created significant organizational challenges. Furthermore, the fact that COPS funding has a sunset clause means that many departments in Indian Country will once again be vulnerable to this increase in demand. 11. Tribal advocates provide free legal services to tribal members. 12. Also, the President's budget for fiscal year 1999 included specific appropriations to combat crime on Indian lands: $51 million for "20 FBI agents and 26 attorneys to enhance investigations and prosecutions by attacking violent crime and gangs, establishing the Indian Tribal Courts Program, and creating a New Drug Testing and Intervention Program" (quoted from "DOJ Seeks 4.4% Raise for FY99" 1998). ------------------------------ Chapter 4. Organization and Management of Police Departments in Indian Country This section examines the ways in which police departments serving American Indian reservations are organized and managed to respond to crime. We begin by adding depth and detail to the description of police departments provided in chapter 2, including a fuller account of their budgetary resources. Then, using both the perspective provided by our survey and specific data from the departments we studied intensively, we examine the organization, strategic planning systems, organizational technology, and personnel systems that Indian police departments employ in their efforts to address crime. While we frequently allude to the ways that the Federal and tribal governments support the police function, a more comprehensive discussion of their roles is reserved for the next chapter. Characteristics of Departments Serving Indian Country Earlier, we presented a brief profile of the typical department to focus our analysis and recommendations; we complete this picture with a description of the variation found in the more than 200 tribally and BIA-administered police departments in Indian Country. Luna offers a detailed statistical profile of these departments; another is being developed by the COPS office (Luna 1998; Luna and Walker 1998; Wood 1998). Therefore, while we offer some basic statistics, this section focuses on the core management challenges across the range. These management challenges are as follows: size, administrative arrangements, staffing and personnel, facilities and equipment, and funding. Size Small departments. These departments have at most nine officers, usually fewer. While there are many more small departments (approximately 150) than medium-sized or large departments, they serve substantially fewer people: between 25 and 30 percent of the citizens served by BIA and tribally administered police departments in Indian Country. Among the most important problems facing small departments is the challenge of providing daily, around-the-clock police coverage to their communities. Rarely is more than one officer on duty at any time. As a result, officers often work without adequate backup and common events (such as an officer's illness or need to testify in court) can substantially reduce or eliminate the availability of police services. The officers working in small departments are true generalists, as they work not only across different police functions but also in administrative and support functions. They may serve as dispatchers, investigators, patrol officers, detention officers, and custodians. During site visits, we even observed patrol officers in these small departments preparing food for detainees and sentenced inmates. In the not-so-distant past, tribal police sometimes served as prosecutors.[1] Organizational charts for departments of this size do not adequately reflect the variety and complexity of the work their officers perform. Medium departments. These departments have between 10 and 50 sworn officers. There are more than 75 medium-sized police departments in Indian Country, serving roughly 60 percent of the Native Americans living in reservation communities subject to BIA or tribal policing. The typical department we describe in chapter 2 is medium-sized and, therefore, gives an apt indication of the management challenges these departments face.[2] The key organizational attribute that distinguishes medium-sized departments from small departments is that a minimum of one or two officers are on duty at all times. That is, it is theoretically possible for these departments to provide 24-hour police coverage, even though it may be quite difficult in practical terms. At the low end of the size range, in terms of the demands made on staff members to perform a wide range of duties, the departments face challenges similar to those of the small departments in Indian Country. At the high end of the size range, the departments can support some specialized activities; not only are some officers free to focus on standard patrol activities, but others may specialize in such areas as gang violence, substance abuse, and domestic violence. This transition may signal that there is a staffing level at which specialization can enable a department to focus on critical strategic and planning issues, a focus that is not possible if officers and command staff must respond to a wide range of demands. In recent years, many medium-sized departments have experienced significant growth in staff, primarily through grants from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). For example, the Three Affiliated Tribes department almost doubled in size. A few other tribes have been able to augment police staffs with their own resources. One of our site-visit tribes, the Gila River Indian Community, used gaming profits to double the size of its patrol staff, from approximately 18 to 38 officers. Large departments. These departments have more than 50 sworn officers. The two largest departments in Indian Country--those of the Navajo Nation and the Oglala Sioux Tribe--have 100 or more uniformed officers. Together these two departments serve approximately 15 percent of the nearly 1.4 million residents of Indian Country. The police functions of both the Navajo Nation and the Oglala Sioux Tribe operate under a 638 contract. The large departments feature levels of organizational complexity not present in small and medium-sized departments. Increased specialization, more elaborate (but not necessarily more efficient) oversight mechanisms, and district-based organization are some of the factors that drive the complexity. Surprisingly, however, some of the primary management challenges that large departments face are similar to those in smaller departments. For example, for many years, the Oglala Sioux Tribe's Department of Public Safety (OSTDPS) had approximately 85 officers spread over nine districts, and each district had its own local command staff. While district-based organization had some positive aspects, it also created a high ratio of command staff to sworn staff. As in small departments, demands on OSTDPS's patrol staff to perform a wide range of duties, many unrelated to the patrol function, were considerable. Similarly, despite the overall size of the department, OSTDPS's district- based organization presented a formidable challenge in providing adequate police coverage over the entire expanse of the Pine Ridge reservation. In recent years, challenges such as these, as well as the problems of managing a large department in a large, highly politicized community, have put tremendous pressure on the largest police departments in Indian Country. Administrative Arrangements The two most common department types are those administered by the BIA and those administered by tribes under 638 contracts. These classifications appear straightforward, but the complexity of organizational and administrative arrangements is significantly increased by the following factors: o The variety of administrative arrangements for policing in Indian Country. As discussed in chapter 2, 638 and BIA departments are only the primary administrative possibilities. o The split in line authority for the investigative and patrol functions between different divisions within the BIA. Until very recently, the BIA's Law Enforcement Division, headquartered in Albuquerque, had line authority for criminal investigation (that is, line authority was placed at the national and regional levels), while BIA superintendents at the reservation level had line authority over other police functions, including patrol, dispatch, and detention (that is, line authority was placed at the local level). In a handful of cases, one function was under a 638 contract and the other was provided by the BIA. o The presence of both Federal and tribal sworn officers in many departments administered by the BIA. In BIA departments, officers hired by the BIA are Federal employees. However, many tribes have also hired tribal officers to supplement the limited number of BIA positions. Despite these factors, it is possible to describe the general reporting arrangement between tribes and the departments that serve them. When the department is administered by the BIA, the reporting relationship is mediated by the BIA. That is, the BIA, not the tribe, has direct supervisory responsibility over the department's executive. (In practical terms, however, tribes wield considerable power over many decisions regarding department policies.) When the tribe administers the department under a 638 contract, the reporting relationship between police departments and the tribes they serve is not mediated by an outside party. This direct supervision may be exercised in a variety of ways: Oversight might be provided by tribal executives (variously known as tribal chairs, presidents, and governors), by elected legislative committees, or by other appointed bodies. An often difficult oversight issue arises in departments that employ both Federal and tribal officers.[3] The usual approach in these departments is for tribally funded officers to be supervised by the BIA police department command staff through a formal agreement with the tribe. Because of the implications this arrangement has for department management, it should not be regarded as a "paper" complexity. First, the dual authority structure allows compensation, training, and equipment inequities, which are likely to lead to personnel and management problems. In our survey, for example, tribes frequently reported that the salary and benefit packages of tribal officers tend to be less attractive than those of BIA officers, who, as Federal employees, are eligible for more generous Federal packages.[4] These differences may create an incentive system that results in a group of officers with inferior capacities. When tribal officers have been hired with COPS program funds, the problem worsens.[5] Because the COPS program does not provide training or equipment funds, some tribes have expressed reluctance to make these kinds of investments in officers who, due to the time limit on COPS grants, may be with their departments for only a few years. Second, the dual authority structure may create a group of officers who have a stronger loyalty to the tribal government than to their BIA managers. In the dynamic political context of Indian Country today, this division of loyalties may be problematic. During intense political conflicts, for example, disputants have ordered tribal officers to arrest or detain Federal officers and vice versa. Staffing and Personnel In general, the sworn officers in Indian police departments are high school graduates (in our survey, 100 percent) and graduates of certified law enforcement training academies (85 percent). Although the figures are comparable to those for non-Indian departments across the country, department leaders frequently noted that such figures mask important deficiencies in the qualifications of current police personnel, as well as serious problems with recruiting qualified officers. (In fact, departments ranked problems with recruiting and training qualified applicants as among the most serious they faced.) For instance, more so than in non- Indian communities, required background checks turn up issues that disqualify prospective officers from service. In a few cases, the percentage of graduates from law enforcement academies was substantially lower than 85 percent. It is likely that these departments included large numbers of newly hired officers--often, these additions were made possible with COPS funding--who had not yet had an opportunity to attend a law enforcement academy. Unusually large numbers of new hires can result in considerable waiting periods for available slots at nearby city, regional, or State police training academies. Two-thirds of the officers in the departments we surveyed were Native American, and 56 percent were members of the tribes they served.[6] In Indian Country, where issues of culture and sovereignty are pronounced, the fact that, on average, only half of the members of a given police force were also members of the tribal community they served may be an important issue for further examination. A more critical finding is that only 13 percent of the police officers serving Indian Country spoke a language native to the community they served, although this figure may mask important regional differences. For example, many officers serving the Navajo Nation are native speakers, while it is exceedingly rare for officers serving reservations in North Dakota to speak an appropriate native language. Most of the approximately 33 percent of officers who were not Native American were Caucasian, but in some areas, particularly the Southwest, Hispanics predominated. Twelve percent of the police officers in the departments we surveyed were women. A final, important observation is that many departments we visited and surveyed had additional assistance from local ranger programs. These programs are not part of the Federal model; that is, they are not a generic component of Indian police departments, and rangers are not generally formal staff members of a department. Instead, the programs are locally generated, quasi-official components of reservation criminal justice systems. They appear to have evolved where coverage needs or community concerns required additional service that the police department itself did not provide. In some cases, rangers provide services driven by the rural character of reservations, including range and wildlife management. In these cases, their function is close to that of fish and game officers. In other cases, their services are only indirectly tied to the rural features of reservations and are driven more by regional crime issues, such as illegal immigration and drug smuggling on the Tohono O'odham reservation and criminal trespass on the Gila River reservation. In these instances, rangers also assume some responsibilities of Federal law enforcement agencies. Because of the programs' extremely local origins, rangers' roles and responsibilities vary from tribe to tribe, although in every case the presence of rangers obliquely increases the personnel resources of their local police department. Facilities and Equipment During site visits, we saw substantial evidence that the physical resources supporting Indian police departments and their employees were either inadequate or designed in a manner that made them impossible to use efficiently. For example, while the square footage of police facilities reported by police departments participating in our survey is on a par with national averages and recommendations, the space is neither well designed nor in satisfactory condition to support police activities (see also Kaestle 1989; Pilant 1995). In most cases, waiting rooms for the public are rare, areas that staff can use to write reports are cramped or nonexistent, and amenities for officers (such as lockers and changing facilities) are virtually nonexistent. Computer capabilities are outmoded, deficient, or absent. Many vehicle fleets are at least 3 years old. Indeed, most of the facilities we inspected were so old (the typical building is 20 or more years old) and in such poor condition that they could not adequately support a modern, progressive police department. Finally, as has been widely reported elsewhere, jail and detention facilities are also inadequate (LeBeau 1998; Office of the Inspector General 1996). In our survey, almost two-thirds of all departments reported that their jail and detention space was overcrowded. At most sites we visited, the jail facilities were too small, poorly designed, or in poor repair. Funding Although several recent research and policy efforts have cited limited funds as a formidable problem for police departments in Indian Country (including Executive Committee for Indian Country Law Enforcement Improvements 1997), assessing the degree of inadequacy of these resources is somewhat complicated. While we generally agree that a lack of funding presents an important obstacle to good policing in Indian Country, we also found that available data were sometimes inadequate and sometimes pointed to multiple, conflicting conclusions.[7] In the discussion below, we use three reference points--officers per 1,000 residents, dollars spent on law enforcement per capita, and dollars spent per employee--to provide a fuller understanding of the resources available to departments in Indian Country (see exhibit 6). o Officers per 1,000 residents. This index compares police coverage in Indian Country to coverage in non-Indian communities, both rural and urban. Our survey findings essentially support the U.S. Department of Justice estimate that the ratio of police officers to residents in Indian Country is 1.3 per thousand (Executive Committee 1997, 6). However, the assertion that this ratio represents half the level of police coverage in comparable non-Indian communities is not consistently supported across data sources. For communities of less than 10,000 population, the FBI (1997) reported 2.9 officers per 1,000 inhabitants in 1996, but other Federal data contradict this estimate. For example, the BJS census of State and local law enforcement agencies indicates that the 1996 ratio hovered between 1.8 and 2.0 in predominantly rural States like South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana (Reaves and Goldberg 1998, 4).[8] o Law enforcement dollars per capita. This figure provides an index of the total financial resources available to the community to provide law enforcement services. The Indian communities responding to our survey spent approximately $83 in public safety funds on each resident. In contrast, non-Indian communities with populations between 10,000 and 25,000 spent approximately $104 on each resident. If Indian Country compares best to communities at the lower end of this range, it might be assumed that the difference is overestimated, but even for smaller non- Indian communities (with population 2,500-10,000) the figure is $101 (Reaves 1996, 7). o Dollars spent per employee. This provides an index of the "support" employees, particularly officers, receive in terms of salaries (and perhaps in terms of equipment, facilities, and training) and the ability of the tribe or department to pay salaries sufficient to recruit and retain highly qualified officers. We found that tribes spend significantly less per employee than their non-Indian counterparts. The average operating expenditure per employee for the tribes responding to our survey was approximately $36,000, compared with approximately $43,400 for non- Indian departments serving communities of between 10,000 and 25,000 residents (Reaves 1996, 7). The national average is even higher.[9] Direct data on officer salaries provide additional information. Our survey responses suggest that pay for officers in medium-sized to large tribes is higher than for the smaller Indian police departments described by Luna and Walker (1998) but slightly lower than the pay that entry-level officers receive in communities of comparable size ($21,200 to $24,600) (Reaves 1996, 8). The salaries of officers in Indian police departments are also highly variable. The range in our sample was as low as $13,000 and as high as $32,000.[10] Some observers believe that tribes inflate the salaries they report in such surveys, but it is unclear why tribes would want to present evidence of a large resource base while arguing vigorously for increased funding. In summary, existing data suggest that tribes have between 55 and 80 percent of the resource base available to non-Indian communities. But, for three important reasons, we believe the terms used in this comparison may underestimate the actual budgetary needs of police departments in Indian Country. First, and most important, the appropriate police coverage (police officers per thousand residents) comparison may not be between Indian departments and departments serving communities of similar size, but between Indian departments and communities with similar crime and social problems. Given that the violent crime rate in Indian Country is between double and triple the national average (Greenfeld and Smith 1999, 2), comparable communities would be large urban areas with high violent crime rates and attendant social problems. Such communities--for example, Baltimore, Detroit, New York City, and Washington, D.C.-- feature high police-to-citizen ratios, from 3.9 to 6.6 officers per thousand residents (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1998, 39, table 1.28; 276-278, table 3.118). This comparison suggests that the resource differential between Indian and non-Indian departments is significantly greater than the above estimate. Second, a particularly important factor in providing police coverage in Indian Country--the immense size of many western reservations--is not reflected in the above estimates. On reservations where the area patrolled is large and the tribal community widely distributed, it is necessary to account for the distances that must be traveled to provide adequate police coverage. Service calls in remote areas of all four reservations we studied intensively could occupy a police officer for half a day or longer, especially in inclement weather. Making police officers as available in Indian communities as they are elsewhere would require resources above and beyond those necessary to rectify the differences noted in this discussion. Finally, the ratios fail to recognize that capital budgets for policing are exceedingly uncommon in Indian Country. The absence of capital budgets is particularly significant for large western reservations. The great distances that police must travel increase the need for facilities and technology (such infrastructure as substations and sophisticated communications technology) that improve the ability of police to serve large areas and are appropriately financed through capital budgets. Frequently, operating budgets appear to be the only means available to departments to finance and support infrastructure (we were unable to confirm this through a review of police and tribal budgets, however). This shortfall, invisible in the ratios given above, leads to a problem cited earlier in this section: The facilities and technology that support Indian Country police officers are often in poor repair or otherwise inadequate. Furthermore, capital budget deficiencies extend to other components of the criminal justice system, and they also have a direct negative effect on the quality of policing. Detention facilities and the services such facilities often support, such as alcohol-treatment programs, are an instructive example: Both are wanting (see LeBeau 1998). Thus, officers who attempt to develop a proactive response to a household where alcohol abuse generates repeat calls for service (for child neglect or domestic violence, for example) often must substitute a brief stay in an overcrowded, outdated jail for alcohol treatment. The result is an uninterrupted demand by that household for police services. In sum, the investment necessary to put the physical infrastructure of Indian Country criminal justice systems on par with their non-Native counterparts is substantial. A Closer Look at Four Indian Police Departments The Indian Country police department described thus far is one that is attempting to cope with an increasing workload in terms of both community demands and crime, and is attempting to do so with a significantly limited resource base. In fact, this characterization does not capture the severity or complexity of the challenges to policing in Indian Country. This section strives to complete the picture by providing contextual detail. It describes pressing problems with the operation, organization, and management of police departments in Indian Country through profiles of the departments and tribes we studied in depth. Briefly, we find that although many problems occur on the level of day-to- day operations (for example, poor direct supervision, poorly developed policies and procedures, poor pre- and inservice training), the most prevalent problems point forcefully to an additional and more significant issue: police departments serving Indian nations face critical institutional design challenges. The descriptions that follow highlight how the problems Indian police departments face are tied to the ways in which these departments relate to the communities they serve and to the fact that tribes have yet to recreate the police function in terms of their specific needs, priorities, and resources.[11] The discussions introduce the remainder of this report, which considers more fully the issue of the institutional design of police departments serving Indian reservations. We preface these profiles by noting that the tribes and departments described have made and are making remarkable progress. In response to the problems described below, the Tohono O'odham Nation has remade its department. Likewise, by investing tribal government resources in policing, the Gila River Indian Community has taken significant steps toward building its own police department, one that can serve its community better. The Flathead department is among the best managed departments in Indian Country, and Fort Berthold's efforts with regard to community policing are among the most ambitious. Tohono O'odham Nation The first tribe we studied intensively was the Tohono O'odham Nation, in extreme south central Arizona. Located in the arid, but beautiful, Sonoran Desert, the Tohono O'odham reservation is characterized not only by the desert landscape but also by seasonal monsoons and towering mountain ranges. The Nation is among the largest in the United States, consisting of almost 2.9 million acres, an area about the size of Connecticut.[12] The size, landscape, climate, and population distribution present many contrasts to typical urban policing; for example, some residences in remote areas can be reached only by horseback and may not be accessible at all during monsoons. The reservation shares approximately 80 miles of border with Mexico and the international border actually splits the Nation. A significant number of tribal members live in Mexico and move freely across the border. Tribal enrollment is 17,500; approximately 14,000 of these members live on the reservation. The seat of the Nation's government and its population center is the town of Sells, with approximately 7,000 residents. The Tohono O'odham Nation is relatively unassimilated; native language use and other evidence of the retention of tradition are high. Tribal gatherings and meetings strongly reflect important cultural attributes of talking things out and reaching consensus. Traditional tribal ceremonies are well attended. The Nation's chief executive and legislative council are popularly elected. The primary political subdivisions are districts, with each of the Nation's 11 districts electing two representatives to the council. In addition, each district elects a district chairperson, whose role is roughly analogous to that of a mayor. Districts and villages play a substantial role in reservation life; the majority of tribal members we interviewed said they identified with their village first, their district second, and the Nation third.[13] The Tohono O'odham entered into a 638 contract to administer their police department in October 1982, which makes it one of the first tribes to acquire control over its police department from the Federal government. We first visited the tribe and observed the operation of its police department during the summer and early winter of 1996. The department had 55 positions for sworn officers, which made it, on paper, one of the largest Indian Country police departments; at that time, however, 20 (40 percent) of these positions were unfilled. In addition, the department had approximately 20 civilian employees and 11 detention officers. The department also had a large budget relative to most departments in Indian Country: $7 million in 1996, which was perhaps the highest in Indian Country regardless of the population served (and much more than a non- Indian department of comparable size). In sum, the department had a number of advantages: It existed amidst a relatively strong tribal culture that invigorated tribal norms and values, was backed by a lengthy period of direct tribal control of the police department, and had the support of a generous budget. Despite these advantages, crime on the reservation seemed to be increasing rapidly, turnover at the department's executive and staff levels was high, and the department's credibility was suffering from severe management problems. Although we emphasize that these were the problems in the Tohono O'odham department of 1996 and that the situation has improved dramatically since that time,[14] we choose to focus on the department as it was then because the challenges it faced are typical of the challenges that confront departments throughout Indian Country today. At the time of our first visit, a major cluster of problems for the Tohono O'odham police department concerned day-to-day operations. The acting chief, who had been with the department for more than 10 years, could not produce such basic documentation as personnel files and policy and procedure manuals, nor in the course of our many conversations could he recall with any degree of specificity recent modifications or revisions to department policies. This was also the case with the department's second in command. In addition, all of the patrol officers we interviewed stated that they could not recall using or being instructed to use departmental manuals, although they assured us the manuals existed. Casual attitudes regarding written policies and procedures are not unusual in the small departments we have visited, where important policies and procedures can be easily communicated in roll calls and other meetings or through informal channels. However, the officers we spoke with could not recall any regular practice of communicating and reinforcing departmental policies and procedures. The lack of attention to basic policies and procedures had a wide range of effects on a department's operation and on its relations with the community. Some were disturbing, but relatively minor; for example, families of some detainees and inmates were refused visits during regular visiting hours, but others were permitted visits during nonvisiting hours. We attributed much of this to an overcrowded jail that put tremendous pressure on detention staff. Some effects, however, were clearly more serious; interviews with representatives of other tribal criminal justice agencies (including those normally friendly to police) revealed that the failure to maintain and enforce departmental policies and procedures had severe consequences for both the department and the community. In the previous year, high-speed pursuits had led to tragic and (in the view of many tribal members and agency representatives) avoidable automobile crashes. Nevertheless, department representatives were unable to produce for review either old or new policies and procedures regarding high-speed chases. Interviewees noted that the lack of policies and procedures handicapped even the best-intentioned officers, who were forced to work without useful guidelines for critical police activities. Conversely, it was difficult to hold negligent officers accountable when clear standards were not in place. Our interviews indicated that this lack of accountability had seriously compromised the credibility of the department, not only among its criminal justice agency partners, but also with the tribal community. During subsequent visits we learned that these problems were not unusual, but were emblematic of department management and operations. As is the case with many departments in crisis, the number and extent of the problems had increasingly isolated the organization from the community (Sparrow, Moore, and Kennedy 1990). As the department became increasingly insular, its focus on crime problems became the product more of its own priorities than of those of the community. Interviews with members of the department and members of the community suggested a mismatch both between police and community priorities and between police and community perceptions of the role of police in community life. Police complained that tribal members were pressuring them to pay too much attention to such "low-level" problems as disputes between neighbors, school-age children, and family members--problems that formerly would have been settled at either the village or the district level. On the other hand, community members complained that police officers were concerned only with such activities as chasing bootleggers and drug smugglers. Community members often acknowledged that these and other conventional police activities were important--that they constituted "real" police business--but they also stated that they needed someone who would help them with their problems. This public frustration contributed to the growth of a popular but controversial quasi-official component of the criminal justice system: district-administered ranger programs. At the time of our first visit in 1996, several districts had already instituted such programs, and other districts were demanding funding from the tribal government to start them. The Tohono O'odham ranger program originally began by patrolling outlying villages and remote areas. Rangers described themselves as the eyes and ears of the police department; they were not permitted to interact with or detain potential suspects but functioned mostly to reassure residents that they were safe and to respond to the emergencies and needs of elderly or isolated residents. At Tohono O'odham, it may be that the dynamic driving the growth of the ranger program was similar to that driving the growth of private security services in non-Indian communities in the 1970s and 1980s (Sparrow, Moore, and Kennedy 1990, 47-50). The poor performance and increasing isolation of the police department precipitated a loss of market share to rangers, who were managed on the district level and were directly accountable to the district chairperson. In effect, rangers were seen as more responsive than police officers to the needs of residents. To some extent, the diminished credibility of the police department was both the cause and a result of the growing problem of recruiting and retaining qualified officers. As already noted, approximately 40 percent of the funded patrol positions were unfilled when we first visited.