U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice

R E S E A R C H R E P O R T

Policing on 

American Indian

Reservations

Stewart Wakeling

Miriam Jorgensen

Susan Michaelson

Manley Begay

 COMMUNITY ORIENTED POLICING SERVICES

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
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 National Institute of Justice

World Wide Web Site World Wide Web Site 

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov 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

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.

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.
iii

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.
v

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
vi

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 mediumsized 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
vii

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:

● 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.

● 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.

● 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—

● Poor employee morale and high turnover result in

a lack of well-qualified and experienced officers.

● Inadequate budgets, fiscal mismanagement, and

even corruption create serious obstacles to the

effective delivery of important police services

and programs.

● Basic departmental management is flawed.

● 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
viii

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,
ix

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;
x

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 crimefighting 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).
xi

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iii

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v

Chapter 1. Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Study Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Organization of the Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Overview of Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

Chapter 2. Policing in Indian Country: The Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

What Is “Indian Country”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Whom Do Police in Indian Country Serve? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Who Polices Indian Country? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

The Criminal Justice System in Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Chapter 3. Crime Trends in Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

The Limitations of Indian Country Crime Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

The Prevalence, Distribution, and Character of Crime on American Indian Reservations . . . . . . . . . . .15

Chapter 4. Organization and Management of Police Departments in Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . .23

Characteristics of Departments Serving Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

A Closer Look at Four Indian Police Departments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

Chapter 5. Federal Policy and Policing in Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

The History of Reservation Policing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

The Contemporary Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

Research on Effective Governing Institutions in Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48

Chapter 6. Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

Reprise of Research on Effective Governing Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

The Possibilities for Community Policing in Indian Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54

What the Federal Government Can Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56

What Tribes Can Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63

Appendix A. Study Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

Appendix B. Survey Respondents and Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
1

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 socioeconomic, 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.
2

Study Methodology

Research for this study included four components:

● A review of relevant literature.

● Brief visits to several Indian police departments and the Indian Police Academy in

Artesia, New Mexico.

● Intensive site visits to four reservations.

● A two-part survey distributed to Indian police

departments.

Each study component is described below. See

appendix A for a more complete discussion of

the study methodology.

Literature Review

Several areas of literature provided background

and context for the primary research. These

included American Indian issues, policing, sociology, and anthropology. For all areas, both historical and current materials, ranging from academic

works to local newspaper articles, were found to

be relevant.

American Indian topics included history, the history of policing on Indian reservations, culture,

economic development, governance, sovereignty,

and materials specific to the four tribes studied

in depth. Policing topics included the history of

policing, community policing, rural policing,

and the organization and management of police

departments. The sociology review focused on

rural sociology. The anthropology review focused

largely on Native American anthropology, but

also included some literature related to social

control and the development of modern legal systems in indigenous societies. The scope of the literature search is reflected in the references at the

end of this report.

Brief Visits to Several Police Departments

We made brief visits to several tribes and their

police departments to inform our selection of

departments to be studied in depth. These 

brief visits also were useful as a means of

understanding possible survey issues. Members

of the research team visited 10 tribes across

the Southwest, the Northwest, the East, and the

Northern Plains, and, to understand the training

the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) provides to

police officers, the team visited the Indian Police

Academy in Artesia, New Mexico.

Indepth Study of Four Police Departments

We studied in depth four departments and the

tribal contexts in which they operate to gain a

richer understanding of the diverse and complex

ways in which Native communities cope with

their policing challenges. Many aspects of 

reservation policing were difficult to understand

or even know about without intensive onsite

research. For example, we used this method to

clarify the details of organizational process and

structure. Likewise, because it allows investment

in relationships, we expected the site-visit

approach to provide data on community members’ more closely guarded opinions (such as

their honest perceptions of their police departments). Data from the four indepth studies are

integrated throughout this Research Report and

are at the core of its discussion and analysis.

Like the brief site visits, intensive onsite research

was an important precursor to survey work.

Because information about the practice of policing in Indian Country is so limited, onsite work

helped define the topics on which broad-based

survey data were needed. Similarly, the substantial

variation in justice administration, jurisdictional

arrangements, and socioeconomic conditions that

exist in Indian Country suggests that only some

quantitative data comparisons are meaningful;

intensive study helped focus the survey on those

that are.

Our site-selection strategy was to choose Indian

nations that varied on as many relevant dimensions as could be captured in such a small sample.1 The most important dimensions on which we

sought significant variation were crime problems

and other policing challenges, culture, economics,

geography, and the management and administrative structure of the police departments.2
3

Study Methodology (continued)

Surveys

The University of Arizona (Tucson) mailed the

first questionnaire (part I of the survey) to more

than 200 police departments in the continental

United States, regardless of size. This distribution was intended to be comprehensive and

included all departments whose primary responsibility is to police Indian Country.3 Harvard

University mailed the second questionnaire (part

II)—which was longer and more in depth than

part I and included some organizational questions—to 67 large tribes (but only 66 departments, since two of the large tribes share a BIA

department). These nations are the Harvard Project

on American Indian Economic Development’s

usual study sample, a group for which the Project

possesses substantial background data. In general, these larger nations set the practice standard

for Indian Country in terms of business activity,

government and administrative function, and

political rights.4 Because of their probable greater

importance, our greater familiarity with them,

and our access to better data about them overall,

we made a concentrated effort to increase the

response rate among these tribes. All data that

we report from both questionnaires of the survey

refer to this smaller study sample.

The questionnaires and list of respondents are

included in appendix B. Forty-six of the 66

departments serving large tribes responded to

part I of the survey and 39 to part II.

One caution is offered here and echoed throughout this report and in the work of other criminal

justice researchers and practitioners in Indian

Country (for example, Elias 1998; Luna 1998;

Luna and Walker 1998; Wood 1998). All but the

most basic and easily verified data must be interpreted carefully. That is why we develop a portrait of the typical department that focuses more

on management challenges.

Notes

1. In some cases, but not all, our work was facilitated

by existing working relationships with tribes. However,

having such a relationship was not a criterion for selection.

2. PL 83–280 provides significant variation along several of these dimensions. We excluded these different

administrative and jurisdictional arrangements from

our study, however, because the impacts of the law—

and the reform options available to tribes whose policing institutions are subject to it—are important enough

to merit a study of their own.

3. There are approximately 330 reservations in the

lower 48 United States, but many fewer Indian police

departments. This is because some BIA-administered

departments serve more than one reservation (particularly where tribal communities are small) and some tribes

are not eligible to have their own police departments.

4. Using the 1980 Census as a benchmark, the Harvard

Project on American Indian Economic Development

sample includes tribes with populations of 1,000 or more

that are located in traditional Indian areas of the continental United States. However, the sample excludes

Oklahoma-based tribes, both because they lack distinct

land bases (the only reservation per se in Oklahoma

belongs to the Osage) and because the U.S. Bureau of

the Census collects data for them in a way that is not

comparable to the way it collects data for other tribes.

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.
4

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 selfdetermined 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.
5

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-à-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 selfgovernment.

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 percent2

) and the attendant social and economic
6

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:

● Farmers of the eastern forests.

● Nomadic hunters of the plains and prairies.

● Farmers and herders of the Southwest.

● Seed gatherers of California and the intermountain Great Basin.

● 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:

● Eskimo and Aleut (Far North).

● Algonquian (various tribes in the eastern forests,

the Plains, and the Far West).

● Athabascan and related languages (the

Mackenzie-Yukon Basin, the Navajos in the

Southwest, and some West Coast peoples).

● Uto-Aztecan and related languages (the Great

Basin and Rocky Mountains area, the Plains,

and the majority of the Pueblos).

● Chinookan and related languages (several 

scattered Far Western tribes).

● 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.
Type of Law

Enforcement Public Law Self- Tribally Public Law

Program 93–638 BIA Governance Funded 83–280

Number 88 64 22 4 N/A

Trend Increasing Decreasing No trend No trend No trend

numbers numbers

Administered Tribe Federal Tribe Tribe State or local

by Government law enforcement 

agencies

Officers are Tribe Federal Tribe Tribe State or local

employees of Government law enforcement 

agencies

Funding Federal (often Federal Tribe Tribe Primarily State 

with tribal Government and local entities

contribution)

Source: Data in this table derive from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Division of Law Enforcement Services, “Listing of Reservations Where Major Crimes

Act Applies By Area Office and Type of Law Enforcement Program,” U.S. Department of the Interior, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 31, 1995.

Exhibit 1: Types of Indian Police Departments and Their Characteristics, 1995

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, BIAemployed hierarchy of law enforcement officers.

For many years, patrol officers were under the line

authority of the local BIA superintendent (each

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

7
8

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 onethird 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 selfgovernance 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 selfgovernance 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 selfgovernance.

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 BIAemployed patrol officers. The Community Oriented

Policing Service (COPS) program6 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.
9

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:

● 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.

● Who committed the crime (Indian or nonIndian). 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.

● What crime was committed. As a result of the

Major Crimes Act of 1885 (18 U.S.C.A. §1153)

and the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 (25

U.S.C.A. §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
10

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:

● Like police departments in Indian Country, other

Indian Country criminal justice agencies suffer

from major resource constraints (see Odum

1991).

● 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).

● 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:

● 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.

● Departments serving most residents of Indian

Country are administered either by the BIA or

by tribes through a contractual arrangement with

the BIA.

● 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.

● 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. §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-ofway 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).
11

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.
13

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
14

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
15

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.
25,000

30,000

35,000

40,000

26,000

32,000

40,000

1994 1995 1996

Exhibit 2. Tohono O’odham Incident Reports, 1994–1996

16

800

1,000

1,200

1,400

1,600

900

1,200

1,500

1994 1995 1996

Exhibit 3. Tohono O’odham Arrests, 1994–1996
17

750

1,000

1,250

1,500

1,750

2,000

1,128

981

1,294

1,351

1,122

1,620

1,988

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Exhibit 4. Fort Berthold Agency Law Enforcement Arrests, 1988–1994

0

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

7,000

8,000

768

699

1,000

2,529

2,218

7,049 6,555

5,527

Calls

Citations

4,109 4,071

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Exhibit 5. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Citations and Number of Calls, 1992–1996
18

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 crossdeputization 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.
19

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 alcoholrelated 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
20

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.
21

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). 
23

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
24

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 mediumsized 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:

● 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.

● 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.

● 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
25

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 nonIndian 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.
26

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).

● 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
Comparable Comparable NonNon-Indian Jurisdictions: National Indian Jurisdictions:

Indian Country Small, Rural Average High Crime 

Officers per 1.3 1.8–2.0 2.3 3.9–6.6

1,000 residents

Law enforcement $83 $104 $131 N/A

dollars per capita

Dollars spent $36,000 $43,400 $48,200 N/A

per employee

Data sources: Executive Committee for Indian Country Law Enforcement Improvements 1997; Federal Bureau of Investigation 1997; Reaves 1996;

Reaves and Goldberg 1998.

27

● 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).

● 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.

Exhibit 6. Resources Available to Police Departments in Indian Country
28

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 alcoholtreatment 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
29

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 nonIndian 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.
30

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. Historically, the ability of tribal candidates to complete certified police

training academies had been limited. Prior to 1996,

40 to 90 percent of Tohono O’odham recruits failed
31

to complete a certified training program (depending

on the year or class of recruits).15 Our interviews

suggested that the problem that most plagued young

recruits from the Tohono O’odham Nation was the

inability to complete the academic modules of

law enforcement certification courses.16 Tribal and

department leadership attributed this to a lack of

well-developed study habits necessary to survive the

highly regimented program. They also felt that many

O’odham youth at the police academy were away

from family and friends for the first time and that

they were ill-prepared for this intense exposure to 

a new, sometimes hostile culture.

In summary, the management issues that most

plagued the Tohono O’odham department in 1996

were a lack of day-to-day attention to departmental

policies and procedures, a disconnect between

police and community priorities, and difficulties

in recruiting and training officers. While the department has made tremendous strides toward resolving

these problems, they are generally widespread in

Indian Country.

The Gila River Indian Community

The second tribe we visited was the nearby Gila

River Indian Community, which is located on

372,000 acres immediately south of Phoenix,

Arizona, one of the fastest growing urban areas in

the United States. Despite the proximity of Phoenix,

however, the geography of the reservation is rural:

Villages are spread across the reservation, and much

of the desert land is accessible only by off-road

vehicles. In 1994, the Gila River Enrollment Office

counted approximately 11,550 enrolled members;

in 1996, approximately the same number of Indians

lived on the reservation itself, making it, populationwise, the fourth largest reservation in Arizona and

sixth largest in the United States. Although the

Gila River reservation was established by an Act

of Congress in 1859, the ancestors of Community

members have been residents of south central

Arizona for hundreds of years. The group is formally called a “community” because members of

two tribes call the reservation home: the Akimel

O’odham (“the River People,” formerly known as

the Pima) and the Pee-Posh (also known as the

Maricopa). The Akimel O’odham, the larger of

the two tribes, is closely related to the Tohono

O’odham (“the Desert People”), discussed above.

The Community’s proximity to Phoenix and other

smaller cities (Chandler, Casa Grande, Coolidge)

has both positive and negative ramifications. For

example, when the Community entered the gaming

business in the mid-1990s, its access to a large urban

market provided quick and enduring financial success. Profits from the gaming enterprise fund a significant fraction of tribal government operations

and give Gila River opportunities that many other

Native nations do not have. On the other hand, the

Gila River Indian Community also suffers from

many problems that are typically considered “urban,”

including youth gang involvement and a high rate

of violent crime. In the mid-1990s, reservation crime

rates caused Gila River to be known as one of the

most crime-ridden Indian communities in the United

States. The ready influence of non-Indian society

has also led to a greater loss of tradition and cultural practices than at Tohono O’odham, although

efforts are being made to revive traditions and language and, especially, to expose children to them.

The Gila River Indian Community has an elected

governor, lieutenant governor, and 17-member

Community Council, as well as an appointed community manager. The seat of the Community government is Sacaton, a small town approximately 

25 miles from central Phoenix. The reservation is

divided into seven districts, each with an elected

district leader, a district council, and a district service center coordinator. Like Tohono O’odham’s, the

Akimel O’odham culture emphasizes talking things

out, a characteristic that is reflected in the many

meetings held at all levels of tribal government.

The police department at Gila River has a tumultuous history. When our research began in mid1996, the department was a BIA department,

headed by a BIA police captain (equivalent to a

police chief in a municipal police department),

who was responsible to an acting Pima Agency

Superintendent in Sacaton. Although the tribe had

run the department for a brief period in the 1970s,

law enforcement was returned to the BIA, reportedly because some non-BIA sources of Federal funding were no longer available. In subsequent years,

police captains came and went, with acting captains

filling in the gaps. During the same period, crime at

Gila River was increasing and becoming more violent, and the jail became known for its overcrowded,

unsanitary, and unsafe conditions.17
32

In response to the growing crime problem and fears

that the BIA department had too few resources to

meet community needs, the tribal government created two additional entities to provide law enforcement services—the rangers and the reserves. The

rangers operated briefly in the 1970s and were reorganized in the 1990s under the auspices of the Gila

River Indian Community Department of Land and

Water Resources. The reason for this reporting

structure was twofold: First, it acknowledged that

one of the rangers’ primary functions was to protect

the natural and cultural resources of the Gila River

Community; second, it was a way to work outside

of the BIA to increase the police presence on the

reservation. In practice, the rangers’ job was to

patrol and police the vast off-road areas of the reservation and cover for and back up regular police

officers. While they carried a tribal commission to

enforce tribal ordinances (all civil offenses), it was

not unusual for them to encounter criminal offenses.

In these situations, they held the offenders until BIA

or county police arrived, confiscated weapons or

property, transported or accompanied the offenders

to the reservation boundary, or just asked the

offenders to leave. Although the rangers’ authority

was sometimes questioned (usually by violators or

off-reservation police), at the time of our initial

visits, they had become a regular and accepted law

enforcement presence in the Community.

The reserves’ role was somewhat different. They 

provided additional coverage to police officers and

rangers who would otherwise work alone. This was

backup that Community members deemed necessary, given the amount of crime and violence on

the reservation. Reserves also provided security

services at public events (especially dances), since

police officers could not be spared routinely for

those details.

In addition to commissioning the rangers and

reserves, the Community began a further effort to

improve policing: It renewed attempts to 638 the

BIA department. Initially, the tribal government

assigned responsibility for the 638 process to the

Law Enforcement Commission, a body whose original charge was to hear complaints by Community

members against the police as well as concerns of

police officers about their department. Commission

members found their liaison and advisory roles to

be clear—but the 638 assignment was not. The

Commission received a contract from the BIA to

hire a consultant to assist with the process, and the

consultant drafted a 638 application, but by late

1995, progress had broken down. The Commission

felt it lacked appropriate administrative assistance

from the tribal government for creating the necessary policies and structures to support the proposed

police department. It wanted to hire a police chief,

who would oversee the 638 process and thereby

establish his own department. Others in tribal government wanted to hire a 638 consultant to handle

the process. In the midst of this debate, pressure for

improved policing became especially intense, and

the Community government decided to invest some

of its newly gained gaming income in the hiring of

20 tribal police officers—that is, officers who were

hired and paid by the tribe, but incorporated into the

BIA department and supervised by its captain.

When we arrived in August 1996 for a second visit,

authority, communication, and administration problems in the department were evident and, in some

cases, growing. For example, a new BIA captain

had just been assigned to Gila River, the acting

Pima Agency BIA superintendent was about to be

replaced by a permanent superintendent, and the 20

new tribal police officers were beginning to return

from training and integrate into the force. While

reporting structures and relationships were clear on

paper, they were being tested in practice. The previous acting captain had reverted to his rank of sergeant. Communications from the captain down to

the officers generally occurred in three ways: through

the three sergeants, through memos placed in the

officers’ department mailboxes, or through memos

pinned to the squadroom bulletin board. But at this

point, there were no formal roll calls. Furthermore,

officers who lived on the reservation took their

cruisers home and started their shifts in their cars by

radioing to the dispatcher, so that timely receipt of

the memos was hit-or-miss. Administrative recordkeeping was in disarray,18 and accountability within

the department (from officers to sergeants and from

sergeants to the captain) was weak. Although the

new captain hoped to make some important changes

in community relations (and knew that Gila River

was likely to enter into a 638 contract), he felt that

the administrative problems came first; he saw

his first task as “grabbing hold administratively.”
33

Community perceptions were that the department

was still in poor shape, although residents hoped

that “their officers” would make things better. Most

saw eventual tribal management as the only way to

both solve the ongoing management problems and

improve the quality of policing.

Even so, 638 progress remained slow. By the time

of our final visit in 1998, the tribe had removed the

Law Enforcement Commission from the core of the

process and appointed a five-person 638 committee

to prepare the required application. The committee

was headed by the assistant community manager

and included a tribal attorney, the chairman of the

Law Enforcement Commission, an economic development planner, and a program planner. In addition,

a police consultant from San Jose was hired to work

with the committee.

Meanwhile, some change occurred at the department level, although new problems arose. The

police captain who had arrived in mid-1996 was

transferred from the Gila River Indian Community

and replaced by an acting captain—a criminal

investigator who would report directly to the BIA

Phoenix Area Office, rather than to the Pima Agency

Superintendent. The removal of the captain was not

related to the 638 process; however, the continuing

turmoil in the department and the need to prepare

the department for tribal management occasioned

the specific assignment of the criminal investigator

to Gila River. He made substantial progress in putting

the department in order. Procedures were more formalized than they had been, greater accountability

was established, and preparations were made for the

department and its personnel to shift from BIA to

tribal administration.19 Nevertheless, before the 638

application was accepted and departmental preparations were complete, the supervising criminal

investigator was reassigned, purportedly because

the Gila River planners objected to his BIA chain of

command—reporting to the Area Office in Phoenix,

rather than to the Pima Agency Superintendent in

Sacaton.

On August 10, 1998, the Gila River Indian Community, its 638 contract with the BIA in place,

assumed managerial control of its police department.

A member of the department, who had moved from

BIA to tribal police earlier in the year and was then

promoted to sergeant, was named acting police

director while applicants for the permanent position

were being considered.

From at least the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s,

police management at Gila River was driven by

crises: personnel turnover, increasing crime (especially increasing violent crime), a sense of urgency

to increase the size of the department, and pressure

to develop a 638 contract. The series of short-term

and acting BIA captains in the Gila River Police

Department and the fractured 638 process were

indicative of (and perhaps also a result of) a department in turmoil. Although Gila River’s government

responded decisively to the problems by hiring

additional officers and building new facilities and,

eventually, by developing a 638 contract, it did not

focus on comprehensive or strategic planning. For

Gila River (as for other tribes), the most opportune

time to develop such capacities would have been

during the 638 application process.

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes live

on the Flathead Indian Reservation, which is located on 1.2 million acres in northwestern Montana

(north of Missoula and south of Kalispell and

Glacier National Park, in the Mission Valley).20

Although the Tribes owned about 22 million acres

in the early 1800s, many lands within the reservation were lost to homesteaders after the Hell Gate

Treaty of 1855. The current land ownership pattern

is best described as a checkerboard, although the

Confederated Tribes have been aggressively repurchasing lands since at least the 1940s. The Tribes

and tribal members currently own more than 51 percent of the land within the reservation’s boundaries.

Because of the history of homesteading, more nonIndians than Indians now reside on the reservation.

The reservation population comprises approximately 18,000 non-Indians, compared with 4,100 tribal

members and 2,000 other Indians. Another 2,700

enrolled members live off-reservation. This mix of

tribal and nontribal residents creates an even greater

jurisdictional complexity than exists on most other

reservations. In addition to the State and tribal

police, for example, four counties (Flathead, Lake,

Missoula, and Sanders) and four municipalities (Hot

Springs, Polson, Ronan, and St. Ignatius) operate

their own law enforcement agencies within the
34

reservation boundaries. The governmental seat

of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes,

including its police department, is in Pablo.

The governing body of the Confederated Tribes is

the Tribal Council, which includes 10 members

from 8 districts. The Council chairperson, who is

elected from and by the 10 members, is the Tribes’

chief executive, although the Council also hires an

executive secretary to oversee many government

departments, including Law and Order (the police

department). The BIA had a strong presence on the

reservation until the mid-1970s, but today its presence and influence are extremely limited. For example, the Salish and Kootenai police department

operates under a self-governance compact (see chapter 2), an arrangement in which BIA involvement is

minimal.

At the time of our visits in mid-1997, the police

chief had been with the department for 25 years.

He first joined as an officer (one of only four) and

4 years later was promoted to chief. Ten years later,

the department still had only six officers. In 1986,

in the wake of local protests over water rates, the

department hired five more officers. Just before the

1994 retrocession agreement (described in greater

detail below) was implemented, another five officers were hired. As of 1997, the department included 17 sworn positions (including 2 vacancies): 11

patrol officers, 2 investigators (one of whom was

on detail to a regional narcotics task force), 2 sergeants, 1 lieutenant, and 1 police chief. All sworn

officers, except the drug task force officer, were

tribal members. The department also included 13

civilians—5 jailers, 6 dispatchers, 1 clerk, and 1

cook—among whom there was considerable overlap

of duties and job sharing. For example, the clerk

was once a dispatcher-jailer in the department and

sometimes still filled in as dispatcher, jailer, or cook;

in addition, because she had been trained to interview child victims of sexual abuse and female victims of domestic violence, she could assist both the

police department and social services in their investigative duties. Also, some of the civilians had

attended the police academy.

In contrast to most of the other facilities we visited,

the Salish and Kootenai police headquarters and

jail were exceptionally clean and orderly. Nevertheless, the police chief was concerned about poor

conditions for the inmates: They were isolated in

their cells, had little to do, rarely saw the light of

day, and had only occasional access to a very small

exercise yard. Meals were delivered to cells because

there was no common area in which the inmates

could gather. However, managers of the Salish and

Kootenai facility were not struggling with overcrowding,21 poor sanitary conditions, or violence.

In general, the Tribal Council and tribal administration have strongly supported the police department,

evidenced in part by departmental budget allocations. Although most of the department’s funding

comes from the Tribes’ BIA funds (in 1997,

$1,228,686 came from BIA funds and $11,546

directly from the Tribes), the virtue of compacting

(as opposed to contracting) is that the tribal government sets budget priorities and allocates funds. The

police department, like other departments, submits its

budget request to the tribal government. Then, the

Confederated Tribes’ Office of Administration and

Budget creates an overall tribal budget, the Council

approves allocations, and financial officers disburse

funds. According to the police chief, fiscal year

1997 was the first year in which the department

received less than it had requested.

By most accounts and by our own observation, the

Salish and Kootenai police department is a well-run,

professional department. The department is well

connected to the tribal government for oversight

purposes, has been increasing in size consistent

with community needs, boasts an extremely competent and generally well-liked staff, and is concerned

about the traditional problems under its purview.

Yet, we also observed that, institutionally, the

department has been struggling to respond to several opportunities for improving the already high

quality of policing it has offered the community.

For example, the department installed a new computer system, Swift Justice, shortly before the site

visits began in 1997. It provides officers with

report-writing software, which allows new incident

data to be immediately incorporated into the system, links the data with jail and dispatch information, and offers improved storage and reporting

functions. While department personnel were generally pleased with the transition to the new system

and its capacities, both officers and prosecutors

missed the traditional access to paper reports for
35

reviewing cases. Prosecutors, in particular, suffered

from the limited information flow. They had been

accustomed to learning about cases promptly by

looking through a basket of reports as they (the

prosecutors) passed through the police department,

but the new computer system, to which the prosecutors were not linked, eliminated these hard copies.

Nevertheless, the new system allows the department

to produce incident reports, monthly and annual

reports, and other analyses more quickly and efficiently than it had before. The department clerk

manages the system, creating the reports and providing technical assistance to the officers. It is

unclear, however, whether the available statistics

are used by the chief or others to determine or

change departmental strategy. In other words, opportunities for better institutional linkage between the

police department and the prosecutors office and

for improved strategic planning may have been

bypassed.

The retrocession agreement is a second example

of challenges faced by the department. Signed by

the State of Montana, the Confederated Salish and

Kootenai Tribes, and all the jurisdictions (except

Lake County) within the reservation boundaries,22

the agreement cedes “exclusive jurisdiction over

misdemeanor crimes committed by Indians” back

to the Tribes.23 This right had been withdrawn from

the Confederated Tribes under the provisions of

PL 83–280 (which subjected many Indian nations

to the criminal misdemeanor jurisdiction of the

States). 

Retrocession engendered a flood of new police

activity. Calls to the department nearly doubled

between 1993 and 1996, from 4,109 to 7,049. To its

credit, the Salish and Kootenai department adjusted well to its increase in size and activity level, as

well as to the new jurisdictional rules. Salish and

Kootenai officers reported (and we observed) that

they worked well with officers from the other jurisdictions, even the Lake County deputies (although

on an administrative level, Lake County and the

Confederated Tribes did not have a warm relationship).24 Even so, the retrocession agreement continues to implicitly challenge the department to move

beyond reliance on rapid-response policing to

rethinking its strategy and role in the community.

Another challenge was noted at the time of our

site visits. Although the department had been running smoothly, both community members and the

Tribal Council were starting to ask for a new police

strategy—they were explicitly asking the department to become more involved in and establish better relationships with the community. In July 1997,

as part of the budget process, the Council sent memoranda to all departments, specifying its expectations.

According to the police chief, the Council always

had asked departments to write a list of goals as

part of the budget process, but this was the first

time that the Council had given a return list of

expectations. For the police department, the Council

requested the following:

● A focus on community law enforcement work,

rather than traffic enforcement.25

● A focus on community relations, to build trust

and relationships.

● Presence at tribal and community activities.

At the same time, some communities were asking

for more police presence and involvement. One

community at the southern end of the reservation,

Arlee, had been experiencing vandalism and other

crimes by juveniles, including a bank robbery. Its

residents were asking that individual officers be

responsible for specific geographical areas, rather

than “running from community to community.”

Some tribal members even suggested that officers

live in the specific communities they policed. At an

Arlee community meeting in August 1997, the community learned that it would get a resident officer—

not by departmental design but by the fortuitous

relocation of a new officer. This officer had retired

from a police department in another State, owned

land in Arlee, and had just been hired by the Salish

and Kootenai department. At the meeting, he

expressed his intention to be available to the Arlee

community—in the schools, at community activities, and in the neighborhood crime watch group.

He also challenged a Lake County deputy sheriff

who attended the meeting and lived in Arlee to do

the same (according to residents’ private comments,

however, this deputy sheriff had not been, and was

not likely to be, either visible or responsive to their

requests). Although the tribal officer could not

promise to be the neighborhood patrol officer (the

police department had said it could not give any
36

community its own officer), he did take the initiative to commit himself to an ongoing relationship

with his community, one that would take him

beyond his working hours to bring the presence of

a concerned police officer into the neighborhood.

We found it notable that a police officer, especially a

new one, felt free to make this commitment; he was

stepping outside the bounds of Confederated Tribes

police practice but must have felt that his chief

would support him.

Although the Salish and Kootenai police department

is responsive, stable, and generally well respected,

at the time of our site visits, it was facing new challenges. Most striking were the Council’s expectations, which seemed to reflect community concerns

and suggested the need for a new policing strategy.

With the encouragement of the Council and the

community, the department was poised to use these

new challenges as an opportunity to think strategically and develop a policing style even more tightly

bound to the Tribes’ institutions, priorities, values,

and needs.

Three Affiliated Tribes

The Three Affiliated Tribes (the Mandan, Hidatsa,

and Arikara) live on the Fort Berthold Reservation

in west-central North Dakota. Tribal membership is

approximately 10,000, of whom 4,000 live on the

reservation. The Tribes have developed a modest

gambling enterprise, but poor economic conditions

predominate. The geography of this area presents

a striking contrast to the desert landscapes of the

Tohono O’odham and Gila River reservations and

the mountainous vistas of the Flathead reservation:

The Fort Berthold Reservation occupies approximately 1 million acres of softly rolling wheat fields

and prairies. About 11 percent of the reservation is

covered by Lake Sakakawea, which was formed by

the Garrison Dam in the early 1950s. The lake not

only split the reservation, but also drove the Tribes

from the fertile, protected banks of the Missouri

River to the surrounding windblown prairie. In the

summer, heat encourages residents to take advantage of the cool lakeside, but in winter, long periods

of extreme cold and blizzards can slow travel and

isolate residents. In brief, the size of the reservation, its geography, and the seasonally intemperate

weather complicate the provision of police coverage. The sheer size of the reservation and the

presence of the lake mean that a single routine service call to an outlying community can occupy an

officer for a substantial period. Poor winter weather

can isolate individual residences, and even entire

communities, for days at a time.

At the time of our site visits (in 1996, 1997, and

1998), the Three Affiliated Tribes police department

was a BIA-managed “split” department, comprised

of BIA officers and tribal officers funded through

COPS grants. Indeed, leaders of this well-managed

department have relied on COPS officers to play a

critical role in assisting the department in addressing its steadily increasing workload. For example,

the increased police coverage these officers provide

helped the department head off a threat by the political leadership in an outlying community to organize its own independently administered police

department. The need for COPS officers correctly

implies that the department has a limited resource

base (its 1998 budget was $1 million). Hiring tribal

officers is one of many adjustments the department

has made to cope with its lack of resources (most of

the other adjustments affect police operations).

Remarkably, these supervision and resource challenges did not deter the Three Affiliated Tribes

department from developing and using policies and

procedures for essential police practices (such as

background checks of new officers and standardized disciplinary procedures). In fact, at the time of

our most recent visit, the department was developing new policies and procedures for a communityoriented bicycle patrol in its most concentrated

population center, New Town. Department leadership was eager to build on such practices to better

address crime in a proactive manner.

Even so, and even though the community exhibited

a higher level of satisfaction with its police department than was present at other sites, there was little

congruence between the department’s conception of

its role in the community and the community’s conception of that role. In interviews, tribal members

consistently focused on their desire for police to

employ methods built on tribal values and culture;

they felt that police could play a powerful role in

preserving and extending tribal values and culture

and that, in doing so, the police could more effectively address crime. In this way, tribal members

seemed to be pressing police to expand their
37

mission beyond fighting crime and to become an

institution equally concerned with maintaining and

contributing to social order.

The notion may have come to mind—and seemed

immediately logical—because of the existence of

a traditional society with precisely that purpose.

Almost every tribal member we interviewed brought

up the Black Mouth Society, an association of wise

and courageous older males who played a central

role in maintaining social order during pre- and

early reservation life (Bowers 1992; Gilman and

Schneider, 1987). One elder, now in her 90s, recalled

that as a child she was warned that if she didn’t

behave, her relatives and neighbors “would tell the

Black Mouths.” She recalled that a warning was

almost always enough.26

In contrast, most members of the police department saw their role primarily in conventional law

enforcement terms. Officers talked regularly about

responding more quickly and efficiently to such

problems as gangs, violence, and substance abuse.

More to the point, the department was organized

and managed to address these conventional problems. This is to be expected in the context of an

apparently rapidly growing crime problem and substantial political pressure to respond to it. Indeed,

the Three Affiliated Tribes’ police department had

the strongest orientation to proactive strategies that

we were able to identify in the course of our study.

But department leadership said they were caught

between standard crime control tasks and community demands to devote increased resources to prevention, a dilemma made more acute by the department’s

limited resource base.

When we asked departmental and tribal representatives why they had not entered their police function

into a 638 contract, they frequently replied that the

Tribes did not want to get into the “law enforcement

business.” Conceived of in this way, policing was

not a function that the Tribes’ political history and

culture had prepared them to adopt. Policing was

seen as a necessary accommodation to modern reservation life, rather than as a means of maintaining

social order through the assertion of tribal values

and culture (the role played by the Black Mouth

Society). Given that the current 638 contracting

process does not invite a consideration of the police

function in these terms, but focuses instead on

ensuring the provision of a standard menu of police

services, it is not surprising that departmental and

tribal leaders did not view 638 as an opportunity

to reconsider the fundamental role of police in 

community life.

Of course, there were other reasons department

members did not fully support the possible transition

to tribal management. While they recognized that

their current approach to law enforcement distanced

them from the community, they also asserted that in

the volatile political context of tribal life, Federal

employment gave them the job security they needed

to perform their work in an independent, responsible manner, without the threat of political reprisals.

Such dynamics were evident in a heated dispute

overheard between two officers who were trying to

decide which one should arrest a prominent tribal

official: Should it be the BIA officer, a Federal

employee, who was in danger of only social

reprisals for arresting the official, or should it be the

COPS-funded officer, a tribal employee, who would

be in danger of not only social reprisals but also

economic ones?

Nonetheless, department leaders predicted that the

question of tribal involvement in the “law enforcement business” would come to the fore in the near

future. Tribal leadership already objected to BIA

plans to shift line authority for policing away from

the local agency to the regional level (to the regional BIA Law Enforcement Division). They felt that

the loss of local control alone might push them to

638 their police function. If COPS funding was also

eliminated (resulting in a loss of police officers) and

crime problems were ongoing, the Tribes’ reluctance to actively invest in law enforcement would

certainly be tested. 

In sum, the Three Affiliated Tribes face a challenge

common to communities in Indian Country—reconciling policing with indigenous means of social

control. The next challenge is to redesign police

departments as core institutions of tribal government.

As at Flathead, community members’ requests for a

different style of service presents an opportunity to

seize these challenges.
38

Conclusions 

In the view of many researchers, policymakers, and

police professionals, reservation policing is in crisis.

In addition to the examples we describe, a thorough

audit of one of the largest police departments in

Indian Country, performed in 1996 by the BIA’s

Division of Law Enforcement Services, supports

this assertion. The audit identified problems that

were similar to—and in some cases more severe

than—those we found:

● Poor employee morale and high turnover resulted

in a lack of well-qualified and experienced officers.

● Basic departmental management was flawed (for

example, there was little effective direct supervision of officers and investigative practices were

poor).

● Inadequate budgets, fiscal mismanagement, and

even corruption created serious obstacles to the

effective delivery of important police services

and programs.

● Undue political interference in police operations

inhibited the ability of the police to perform their

duties in a fair and equitable manner and reduced

the credibility of the police in the eyes of the

community.

● These and other problems created widespread

and serious community dissatisfaction with the

police (Naranjo et al. 1996).

A number of special reports, commissions, conferences, and blue-ribbon committees have grappled

with the problems that police departments in Indian

Country face and, in response, have offered a

number of recommendations and proposals. These

include increased funding, tightened management,

clarified reporting relationships, and updated technology (see Executive Committee 1997; Silverman

1996). Many of these responses are necessary to

improve policing in Indian Country, but they may

treat the symptoms, rather than the disease. Our

research, particularly the information gathered

through the case studies, suggests that many of the

problems with Indian Country policing have more

fundamental, institutional roots than the “typical

fixes” take into account. Further, we argue that

these problems do not originate in the contemporary

administration of policing by tribes. Rather, they

originate in the history and current administration of

Federal Indian policing policy. To better understand

this proposition, we turn next to an extended discussion of the foundations of policing in Indian Country.

Notes

1. Interview at Mescalero Apache, March 1996.

2. As noted, the typical department has approximately

32 employees, 16 of whom are sworn officers. It serves a

large land area with a relatively small population, which

is located in both rural areas and more densely populated,

“semiurban” communities. Like most departments in

Indian Country, the typical department works with a limited resource base. It is administered either by the tribe

through a 638 contract or by the BIA.

3. Approximately 40 percent of all BIA-administered

departments in our survey reported that they employed

both tribal and BIA officers.

4. The Gila River Indian Community was a prominent

exception to this finding. Before the police department

was 638ed, tribal officers’ salaries were higher than those

of BIA officers due to a 20-percent salary increase given

to all tribal employees in September 1996. Federal retirement benefits had not been matched, however.

5. The grants were designed to facilitate the implementation of community policing and, as such, were naturally

directed to local police departments. Therefore, Federal

agencies, such as BIA police departments, cannot apply

for COPS funding, and the new officers must be tribal

employees.

6. We note, however, that these numbers are moving targets. As tribes continue to pursue 638 contracts and selfgovernance compacts, departments will fall under tribes’

member-preference guidelines, and the percentages of officers who are Native and who are tribal members will rise. 

7. Indian Country population estimates cause many of the

problems. For example, Federal figures for 1993 indicate

that departments serving communities with populations of

10,000 to 25,000 had an average budget of $1.6 million

dollars (Reaves 1996, 7). In the mid-1990s the typical

department in Indian Country served a population of

approximately 10,000 residents and had a law enforcement budget of $1 million—or approximately 60 percent

of a comparably sized non-Indian community’s budget.

(When inflation is taken into account, the difference is

even larger.) As we note when describing the typical

department, however, 10,000 may be an overestimate of

the average service population. Then, appropriate budget

comparison changes quite dramatically: If the population
39

of the community served by the typical reservation police

department is closer to 6,000, the comparable non-Indian

community’s budget is $540,000, which suggests that

Indian communities have relatively generous budgets.

Furthermore, the ratio of officers to citizens jumps from

1.6 per 1,000 population (16 officers serving a community of 10,000) to 2.7 per thousand (16 officers serving a

community of 6,000); this figure is substantially higher

than that of non-Indian communities of comparable size.

Indeed, among the four sites we studied intensively, the

ratio of officers to citizens was 3.3 per 1,000 resident

tribal members. Despite these concerns about the effect

of population estimates on per capita resource calculations, the discussion in this section relies on the population estimate of 10,000—not only because it is supported

by recent important policy pieces in the field (especially

the Executive Committee for Indian Country Law

Enforcement Improvement’s “Final Report”), but also

because it is appropriate to draw attention to the lack of

reliable service population data. Moreover, higher population estimates may account for the fact that restricting

the “community served” figure to resident tribal members ignores the many individuals who (1) live off but

work on the reservation, (2) travel through the reservation for purposes of business or pleasure, (3) live seasonally on the reservation, or (4) are full-time but

nonmember or non-Native reservation residents.

8. It is worth noting that this figure (the 1.8–2.0 ratio)

includes both State and local sworn officers. When State

police officers are excluded, the ratio drops to between

1.0 and 1.6 officers per thousand population. We believe

the appropriate staff comparison should include State officers, however, since small, rural, non-Indian communities

benefit from the services of city, county, and State police. 

9. Theoretically, a low “dollars spent per employee” estimate could reflect tribes’ conscious choice to maximize

police coverage instead of hiring fewer officers and allocating increased funding to critical support functions

(management information systems, training, improved

equipment). Indeed, we speculate that the large size of

the areas policed, as well as the social and political

dynamics unique to Indian Country, compel tribes to

focus on coverage rather than on support functions. For

example, the political pressure outlying reservation communities create as they agitate for increased police services seems to result in more police officers rather than

fewer but better-equipped and better-supported officers.

However, the fact that both “officers per 1,000 residents”

and “dollars per employee” are lower within Indian

Country than without suggests that resources are truly

deficient and not only for tribes that have chosen to fund

personnel instead of support functions. 

10. The median ($21,000) falls below the average, but

not so far that the figures in the highest range could be

said to skew the average, making it unrepresentative of

salaries overall.

11. It is often claimed that the rural setting and small

communities typical of Indian Country generate a sort of

informal community policing approach that grows out of

officers’ close relations with citizens and the multiple

demands these close relationships generate. But although

officers might know more about the citizens and neighborhoods they serve than their urban counterparts, and

might occasionally be called upon to perform duties outside of those normally carried out by their urban colleagues, the department itself is not necessarily organized

and managed to effectively respond to (and draw on)

tribal values, priorities, and resources.

12. Most, but not all, of the Nation’s land holdings

are contiguous. The 10,000-acre Gila Bend Reservation

is northwest of the reservation and is the site of the

Nation’s casino operation. The 71,000-acre San Xavier

Reservation lies to the east near Tucson. Twenty-acre

Florence Village lies north of the reservation, near the

city of Florence. The distribution of land holdings also

complicates police coverage.

13. Although most traditional mechanisms of social order

were focused on the local level, the organization of the

police department was centralized. This made it difficult

for the department to distribute its staff in a manner that

might facilitate leveraging these community resources.

To some extent, the same could be said of the Gila River

Indian Community and its department, which is discussed in the next section.

14. We attribute the improvements not only to new

departmental leadership but also to strong support for

improved policing on the legislative and executive levels

of tribal government.

15. This estimate is based on interviews; no data to support this assertion were available, mostly due to a lack of

personnel records.

16. A related problem at that time was that many 

members of the force had less than 12th-grade reading,

writing, and math skills.

17. At the time of the initial site visits, Gila River was

planning to build a new Justice Center, which would

include new adult and juvenile detention facilities. On

May 1, 1998, the Community celebrated the ribbon cutting for the state-of-the-art juvenile facility (though it

would not be occupied for some time, due to staffing
40

difficulties). On December 4, 1999, the dedication ceremony was held for the main criminal justice facility.

18. Although the dispatchers’ logs and the incident

reports that officers did complete were filed in an orderly

fashion, officers did not always turn in reports. Also, in at

least one department report to the BIA, the numbers did

not match other data department leaders had provided

(e.g., number of homicides), nor were they internally

consistent (the number of crimes cleared sometimes

exceeded the number of crimes reported).

19. One useful, but short-lived, byproduct of his preparations for 638ing arose from the inventory he conducted

on the vehicle fleet. During the inventory, officers could

not take their cruisers home at the end of each shift, so

they needed to report to headquarters to begin their next

shift. This allowed each shift to start with a roll call,

improving day-to-day communication. However, it was

expected that as soon as the inventory was complete, officers would once again be able to take cruisers home, and

the roll calls would end.

20. With the Hell Gate Treaty of 1855, 12 Stat. 975, three

groups were consolidated onto the Flathead Reservation:

“Flatheads,” Pend d’Oreilles, and Kootenais. The

Flatheads and Pend d’Oreilles are both Salish peoples,

with similar languages but somewhat different cultures.

The Kootenais are a non-Salish people, with both a different language and a different culture.

21. At the time, official detention capacity is 20, but the

daily average for adults was 12.

22. Cover memorandum on the “Memorandum of

Agreement Between State of Montana, Flathead County,

Lake County, Missoula County, Sanders County, City of

Hot Springs, City of Ronan, Town of St. Ignatius and the

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead

Nation,” dated October 12, 1994, notes Lake County’s

decision not to sign. Additionally, the city of Polson,

the county seat of Lake County, entered into a separate

agreement with the Tribes, but Lake County also

declined the opportunity to enter into a similar special

agreement.

23. “Memorandum of Agreement,” above.

24. At least some of this respect arose from the fact that

Flathead officers usually attended the state police academy, where they received the same training as all the other

officers—an equivalence that facilitated both cooperation

and cross-jurisdictional activities.

25. Much police concern and attention is given to traffic

problems on U.S. Route 93, which bisects the reservation

from north to south. At the time of our visits, the only

limit on speed during the day (except in business districts)

is that motorists drive in a “reasonable and prudent” manner; the road is generally only one lane in each direction;

cars are turning onto and off of the road as it changes

from high-speed to commercial district; and the highway

serves local residents, commuters, truckers, and tourists

alike. DUIs are a tremendous problem, and fatalities are

not uncommon. Traffic-related activities deflect a great

deal of police time from other problems.

26. Interview with Cora Baker, May 1998.
41

Chapter 5. Federal Policy and Policing in

Indian Country

This section examines the history of reservation

policing and how that history interacts with current

Federal policies to influence the effectiveness of

tribal police. A core issue that emerges is the inadequacy of Federal policy to promote the ability of

Indian nations to design and exert meaningful control over their own policing institutions. This failure

is sharpened when contrasted with findings from

research in Indian Country on the characteristics

of effective governing institutions: Governing 

institutions are more effective when they are selfdetermined and when they reflect, in a functionally

meaningful way, a tribe’s underlying cultural norms

and values. Indeed, self-determined institutions are

more likely to provide this match between institutional design and citizens’ jointly held social, cultural, and political expectations and values.

The History of Reservation Policing

When the reservation system was established in the

early 1800s, law enforcement was mostly provided

by Federal troops, whose responsibilities reflected

the U.S. Government’s interest in limiting Indians’

ability to interfere with the economic pursuits of

non-Indian settlers. For example, soldiers were

responsible for maintaining levels of order sufficient

to prevent violent activity from spilling beyond

reservation boundaries,1 for enforcing the laws and

policies that restricted tribes to reservations, for prohibiting a wide range of traditional activities that

were viewed as immoral or criminal, and for overseeing the rationing of food and other supplies.

(It was not until passage of the Major Crimes Act

in 1885 that crimes whose effects were not felt outside of reservation boundaries—that is, crimes by

Indians against Indians—drew the official attention

of the Federal Government.) In short, Indian communities were policed by the military arm of a colonial government (Barlow 1994; Peak 1989; Wachtel

1980, 13).

Official U.S. Government permission for Native

Americans to participate in the policing of reservations was first granted in the 1860s. Over the next

20 years, a wide variety of policing arrangements

evolved: About one-third of all reservation police

forces consisted primarily of tribal members; others

included a mix of tribal members, Indians from

other reservations, and non-Indians (Knepper and

Puckett 1995). Significantly, Native representation

on these police forces should not be interpreted as

a sign of increased control by tribes over their own

affairs. The U.S. Government, not tribes, supervised

a majority of the forces, and police continued to act

in its interest.

Indians themselves viewed the Native Americans on

these forces as agents of the U.S. Government, and

the officers were required to emulate non-Indians.

They “were expected to set an example by wearing

white man’s attire, cutting their hair, practicing

monogamy and taking an allotment. Their duties

included determining whether a fellow tribesman

was working enough to merit his sugar, coffee, and

tobacco rations” (BIA 1995b, 24). Indeed, as one

U.S. Indian agent is reported to have remarked,

“The police are looked upon as the common foe,

and the multitude are bitterly opposed to them”

(Hagan 1980, 49–50). Furthermore, one reason tribal members were favored as police officers by the

U.S. Government was that they were more adept in

dealing with traditional leaders than were Federal

troops (Meissner 1995). In this sense, the increased

representation of Native Americans on reservation

police forces was motivated primarily by the tactical advantage their knowledge and experience provided the Federal Government in maintaining an

orderly reservation system, rather than by a recognition that tribes should be accorded increased

rights to self-determination (Barlow 1994; BIA

1995b; Hagan 1980).
42

The historical record regarding reservation policing

from the turn of the century through the 1950s is

limited. The General Allotment Act of 18872 transferred nearly 90 million (of an original 138 million)

acres of Indian land to State and Federal jurisdiction, and by the 1920s most reservations had only

one or two officers. The number swelled briefly

during Prohibition, but with the end of that era,

the budget for and number of reservation police

dropped once again (Deloria and Lytle 1983). In

1956, for example, the ratio of police to residents

on Indian reservations was 2 per 5,000 compared

to a ratio of 10 per 5,000 in the country as a whole

(BIA 1995b, 64). The BIA organized this small

nucleus of officers into the first modern reservation

police forces (Wachtel 1982, 112).

During the first 60 years of the 20th century, tribes

themselves supported at least some of the law

enforcement presence on reservations. Even so, the

support was grudging. For example, many accounts

of reservation life during the period allude to the

role of reservation police in forcibly removing

children from their families and sending them to

Federal boarding schools, which were infamous for

their hostility to Native culture. We received firsthand accounts of these activities in our research at

the Fort Berthold and Flathead reservations; the

phenomenon is also documented in research literature (Gilman and Schneider 1987).

During the late 1960s and the 1970s, Indian activism (including the occupation of BIA offices in

Washington, D.C., and the siege of Wounded Knee),

drew new attention to the problems of crime on

reservations. This attention generated efforts to

increase funds for policing and to professionalize

police departments and other components of the

Indian criminal justice system. In this period, the

number of police in Indian Country increased 

significantly and Congress appropriated funds to

establish the BIA Law Enforcement Academy (BIA

1975). These changes had two important results for

Indian police management and policy—results with

long-lasting implications. First, efforts to organize

and manage the rapidly growing police presence in

Indian Country were based on the “professional”

model of policing, the dominant approach to nonreservation (municipal) policing in the 1960s and

1970s (BIA 1975, 83, 91). Second, the influence

of the BIA Division of Law Enforcement Services

over reservation policing greatly increased.

The professional model is characterized by a centralized organizational hierarchy (with military-style

ranks and structure), insulation between the police

and community and political leaders, and a narrow

focus of the police function on crime fighting (and

away from other problem solving). The activities of

police operating within this model include preventive patrol by automobile, rapid response to centrally dispatched calls for service, and crime control

through the apprehension and incapacitation of

offenders (Kelling and Moore 1988).

In part, the professional approach evolved as a

result of new technology. Automobiles, two-way car

radios, dispatch capabilities, and early computers

made it possible to respond to emergencies. But the

professional approach was also a reaction to the

“political” policing that had previously dominated

in America’s cities, in which police were so closely

linked to neighborhoods and local politicians that

they were virtually an adjunct to local political

machines.3 Police operating within the political

model were thoroughly integrated into neighborhood and community life, knew neighborhood residents, understood community norms and customs,

and were able to rely on community connections in

providing services, preventing crimes, and solving

crimes; however, the approach had substantial downsides. Intimacy with the community, closeness to

political leaders, and a decentralized organizational

structure gave rise to numerous forms of corruption.

As a result, architects of the professional model

sought to reform policing by severing the close link

between police and citizens and insulating the police

from political pressure. In combination with new

technology, this new attitude about what police officers should be doing led to the elimination of neighborhood foot patrols and the demise of personalized

responses to community crime and safety problems.

As noted, the second important result for reservation police policy and management was the growing

prominence of the BIA Division of Law Enforcement Services. During the long period from the turn

of the century to the early 1960s, responsibility for

reservation policing had (by virtue of neglect) fallen

to the tribes and, to a lesser extent, a variety of
43

Federal entities. In the late 1960s and early 1970s,

however, law enforcement services rapidly came

under the authority of the BIA. Both the increased

presence and the professionalization of police on

reservations were driven by the BIA through a

series of requests to Congress for increased funds.

Consequently, it secured and institutionalized primary control over Indian police policy and management (Wachtel 1980).

As a result of these two factors, not only did tribes

have less direct control over general police policy,

but because of the influence of the professional

model, Indian communities were also further distanced from the police departments serving them. In

fact, these factors preserved the legacy of police as

an occupying army—Federal agencies imposed both

the design and administration of policing on Indian

nations with little regard for indigenous mechanisms of social control, just as they had in the late

19th century.

The Contemporary Problem

Ironically, at the same time that the BIA Division

of Law Enforcement Services was growing in

prominence and the professional model of policing

was in ascendance, the movement toward sovereignty was the dominant political force in Indian

Country. During the late 1960s and early 1970s,

Indians worked intensively to acquire increased

levels of self-determination and self-governance.

As a result of their advocacy, tribal governments

acquired the power to legislate, regulate, and adjudicate public policy on their reservations. Tribal

governments came to include more powerful legislatures and courts; to possess taxation, economic

development, and environmental regulatory authority;

and to provide infrastructure and public services

(Cornell and Kalt 1993, 7; O’Brien 1989, 197–254).

In large part, tribes acquired increased control of

these governmental functions through PL 93–638,

the Indian Self-Determination and Education

Assistance Act of 1975, which, as noted above,

allows tribes to contract with the Federal Government to regain management control over programs

otherwise administered by the BIA and other

Federal agencies.

Policing services were not exempt from this movement. But despite PL 93–638 (and the accelerated

pace at which tribes are contracting with the U.S.

Government to deliver their own police services),

police policy in Indian Country is still driven, both

directly and indirectly, by Federal agencies rather

than by tribes.

This arrangement has advantages. For example,

employees of departments that are still managed

by the BIA are Federal employees and, as such,

are provided with job security, livable salaries, competitive retirement packages, and protection from

undue political pressure in the uncertain political

environment typical of many tribes. These benefits

and protections help attract qualified candidates

to the field and help police officers carry out their

duties. Another advantage of Federal involvement

is the provision of free training for police officers

and criminal investigators at the BIA police academy in New Mexico, training that has improved

the overall quality of policing in many reservation

departments. The improved quality of criminal investigation under the leadership of the BIA Division

of Law Enforcement Services is yet another benefit. Nonetheless, U.S. Government policy has created a number of problems for policing in Indian

Country—in departments under both BIA and 638

contract administration.

Multiple Lines of Authority Decrease

Accountability and Create Tribal 

Capacity Vacuums

A key aspect of the BIA management structure is

control over policing, which occurs through two

separate administrative paths (illustrated in exhibit

7). The first path governs the patrol function of

BIA police departments. Patrol officers are supervised by the department’s commanding officer

(usually a police captain). Until recently, this officer was supervised in turn by the local BIA superintendent, who was responsible for policing and all

the other BIA programs run through the agency4

—

and so on up to the highest levels of BIA administration in Washington, D.C. (Now, BIA police

captains report directly to the BIA Division of Law

Enforcement Services, which is headquartered in

New Mexico.) The second administrative path

governs the investigative function, over which the

department’s commanding officer does not have

line authority. Instead, line authority for this function lies directly with the BIA Division of Law
44

Enforcement Services. Neither path allows supervision by or accountability to representatives of the

tribal community. This complicated management

structure has several implications:

● Until recently, the patrol and investigative functions in the same police department were under

the authority of different departments within the

BIA.

● BIA police departments’ commanding officers do

not have line authority over their own criminal

investigators.

● Authority and accountability for BIA police management and policy are diffused among many

individuals and bureaucratic entities (although

policy changes have made the group less diffuse

than before).

The justification for placing both patrol and criminal investigation under the authority of the BIA

Division of Law Enforcement Services is sound:

Supervision of both functions is within a single

division of the Bureau that has substantial expertise

in law enforcement. However, the arrangement is

not without difficulties. Local BIA police captains

still do not have line authority over their criminal

investigators. Many tribal leaders and BIA superintendents we interviewed were concerned that the

Division of Law Enforcement Services seated in

New Mexico might know less about and be less

responsive to tribal needs, resources, and priorities

than the superintendents. Furthermore, the arrangement is roughly analogous to having city police

departments supervised by State or Federal authorities—a degree of external control that is contemplated only in those rare instances when a police

department is either so corrupt or so poorly managed that it must be placed in receivership. In sum,

the potential for accountability problems persists.

The complexity of the overall management structure

also requires tribes to exert political pressure and

build their cases for new policies with a wide variety of overseers. We found that tribal criminal justice planning bodies often allocated more of their

limited resources to lobbying oversight agencies (to

getting authority) than they did to exercising authority in the service of sound strategic planning. Thus,

even when tribes devote increased energy to policing, this energy is not used efficiently to develop

effective police departments. Another result is that

Tribal Community

Local BIA

Superintendent

BIA Law Enforcement

(Albuquerque)

Commanding Officer

Investigative Division

Patrol Division

=

Exhibit 7. BIA Supervisory Paths Through 1997
45

even those tribes intent on improving policing have

difficulty knowing where to start, which political

players to engage to further tribal aims and how to

address the many substantive planning challenges.

As described in chapter 4, this was a problem for

the Gila River Indian Community as it pursued a

638 contract. Both of these results are examples of

tribal capacity vacuums.

Jurisdictional Complexities Prevent 

Strategic Planning

The Major Crimes Act of 1885, which places 

jurisdiction for most serious crimes with Federal

agencies, also works to diffuse authority and

accountability for criminal justice policy and management in Indian Country. The Act arose from the

Supreme Court’s decision in Ex parte Crow Dog

(109 U.S. 556 (1883)). In Crow Dog, the Supreme

Court held that the U.S. District Court of South

Dakota lacked jurisdiction over a Sioux Indian

who already had been punished by his tribe for

killing another Indian. Congress, which considered

the punishment far too lenient, responded to the

Supreme Court’s decision by quickly passing the

Act. As its title implies, the Major Crimes Act

granted the Federal Government jurisdiction over

a number of crimes committed on Indian reservations, including murder, kidnapping, rape, and robbery. It now also covers arson, assault, maiming,

larceny, receiving stolen property, manslaughter,

attempted homicide, conspiracy to commit murder,

and statutory rape (U.S. Code, Title 18).

Besides the obvious loss of sovereignty, an important implication of Crow Dog is that the development of comprehensive, tribally driven crime

strategies—such as those relating to serious youth

violence, drug-related crime, child abuse, domestic

violence, or sexual assault—now depends on shared

priorities or the sustained attention of Federal

agencies, since so many of these crimes fall under

Federal jurisdiction. Not only must tribes engage

the BIA in developing responses to crime, they

must also engage the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s

Office, and the Federal courts. When control of

policy and management is so divided, tribes feel

they have neither the opportunity nor the obligation to develop their own approaches to policing.

The 638 Process Diverts Tribes From the

Consideration of Community Priorities 

and Goals

Theoretically, the 638 contracting process should

provide tribes with the opportunity to design police

departments and implement policing procedures

that are well matched to tribal needs, resources,

values, and priorities. In practice, however, this has

not been the case, and examples of tribes that have

used this opportunity to carefully consider the

police function are exceedingly rare, for several

reasons. First, as detailed above, tribes enter the

process without adequate planning capacities and,

therefore, are unable to use 638 planning as a

means of furthering their own goals. Second, the

contracting process is focused on implementing

policing on the most basic level. From the Federal

Government’s standpoint, the contract must address

basic operational, organizational, and personnel

issues and must provide a stream of funding to

support these functions, so that the core police

services once provided by the BIA can now be provided by the tribe. But neither the contract process

nor the contract itself focuses on building planning

capacity on the tribal level, strategic planning on

the departmental level, or systematically considering tribally driven criteria (such as resources,

needs, values, and priorities) in designing a department that functions as a core institution of tribal

government.

These issues were clear impediments in two of the

communities we visited. As noted above, over the

course of 3 or 4 years of planning, Gila River Indian

Community’s government had charged several bodies with the planning task for contracting, including

the Law Enforcement Commission and, finally, a

special planning committee headed by the assistant

community manager. Concordant with the Federal

Government’s focus on operational, organizational,

personnel, and funding issues, these groups had few,

if any, members with policing expertise; saw the

638 contract primarily as a stream of funding to

acquire, rather than as an opportunity to plan how

the Community itself hoped to be policed; and did

not provide for an ongoing strategic review of the

department’s progress toward Community goals.

Similarly, the Three Affiliated Tribes’ government

had long declined to enter into a 638 contract,

largely because they did not see the 638 process 
46

as an opportunity to regain traditional methods of

social control, but rather as a means of entering

“the law enforcement business.”

Federal Management and the Influence of the

Professional Model Discourage Community

Partnership

While the lack of planning capacity hampers the

development of effective police institutions, the

continued control of police policy and management

by the Federal Government (for tribes with BIA

departments) and the lingering effect of the professional model of policing (for tribes with departments

under 638 contracts) generate a more fundamental

flaw in policing in Indian Country. To better understand this flaw, we consider the underlying philosophy of policing in a free society.

Specifically, communities grant police tremendous

power—the power to detain, to arrest, and even to

use deadly force. Communities do this because they

rightly place a high value on what police do in protecting freedom and keeping communities safe.

This is a contract between communities and police

(Goldstein 1977). But Native American communities have not participated in designing their own

police institutions and then consented to be policed

by those methods. Departments administered by

the BIA are not agents of tribes but of the Federal

Government and, as such, have no incentive to ask

the communities they serve for legitimacy or for

authorization of the police function. Even those

departments operating under self-determination contracts adopted—as a byproduct of the contracting

process—the organization and methods of the professional era of policing. They look primarily to

the law and to external professional standards for

authorization, rather than to the community. This

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.

Several examples may illustrate what this means.

The first comes from Tohono O’odham, where we

found that one of the most successful strategies

for reducing youth violence was formulated by the

local Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)

officer.5 This program had an especially productive,

though unintended, result. It gave the D.A.R.E.

officer an opportunity to simply talk with students.

To an outsider, the long meetings and discussions

typical of the Tohono O’odham can seem unproductive, but for the D.A.R.E officer, this culturally

appropriate activity helped him build strong relationships with youth. In fact, many of the tribal members we spoke with described the ideal O’odham

officer as one who simply talked—talked with people to understand their motivation for committing

crimes, to find a solution to problems, and to quietly

but firmly persuade those involved to implement

that solution. Significantly, however, few members

of the police department looked on this activity as

falling within the definition of “real” police work,

although they pointed to interventions the D.A.R.E.

officer had developed as among the most effective

crime prevention strategies present on the reservation. Because vestiges of the professional model of

policing determined Tohono O’odham police officers’ methods, the fact that this officer’s approach to

problem solving had a strong fit with tribal norms

and values had gone largely unrecognized.

At the Flathead reservation, several communities

had called upon the police for an increased presence, in one case to control drug marketing and in

another to prevent cars from speeding along the

side roads on which children walked to school. In

the first instance, residents used 911 to complain

about the drug-marketing activity, but the police

response proved inadequate—a squad car either

arrived on the scene too late or arrived only to

break up a single deal, and these responses did not

affect violator behavior. The local Indian housing

authority finally addressed community concerns by

hiring as a resident manager a tribal officer who had

been detailed to the Federal drug enforcement task

force. Besides prominently parking a police vehicle

outside his home (which was near the usual site of

drug-selling activities), the officer organized community meetings. The group of resident activists

that emerged from these meetings organized a

Neighborhood Watch, neighborhood cleanups, and

a storage-shed building day. With these interventions, the community transformed itself from being

the least desirable housing project on the reservation

to one of the most desirable.
47

In the second instance, community members also

organized meetings, but they were more effective

on the political level. Council members, the Tribal

Chairwoman, and other members of the executive

branch explicitly asked the police to become more

involved in that particular town and with the 

community in general. In a Council meeting we

attended, one Council member admonished the

police chief, “We don’t want you just picking up

more people on Highway 93.”6

In discussions with us, the Chairwoman explained,

“The Council would like to see more community

involvement and partnership, so people don’t just

see [the police] in times of crisis. Instead of just

traffic [enforcement], we’d like to see more focus

on community participation—a presence in the

community, talking to people, assisting them,

[involving themselves] in education and community

activities.”7 To their credit, the Confederated Tribes’

police officers and police leadership told us both

of these stories; however, they stressed that doing

more to meet community requests for involvement

was beyond their official function. Again, police

responsiveness was constrained by the professional

model of police work and by the fact that, customarily, Indian police departments are not organized

and managed to turn to the community for authorization and direction.

More generally, we found at most sites that tribal

citizens rely increasingly on police and on the courts

to settle disputes and problems that not so long ago

might have been mediated by neighbors, elders,

tribal leadership, or other traditional means. These

problems—disputes between neighbors, family

quarrels, abandoned and disorderly properties, and

unsupervised youth—are more closely linked to the

quality of community life than they are to conventional definitions of crime. Police cited the rapidly

increasing burden on 911 systems as the product of

this phenomenon, and tribal criminal and civil attorneys complained that their caseloads have ballooned

beyond reason. On the one hand, police protest that

the community demands that they solve too many

problems that are not really crimes. On the other

hand, citizens complain that police do not respond

to the real needs of the community.

It is probably unjust to blame such conflicting

expectations solely on police policy. The erosion of

traditional culture has also contributed to the problem. The mechanisms of social control that might

be brought to bear on noncrime problems are simply fewer and weaker; thus tribal communities ask

more of their police. Yet even this has a connection

to Federal policy (although this time to broad policy

objectives, not policing policy specifically). Through

at least the 1960s, Federal procedures exacerbated

the loss of cultural knowledge, discouraged community problem solving, and helped create an expectation that someone else should deal with difficult

problems. For example, individuals with substance

abuse problems were sent to off-reservation treatment centers; economically productive adults were

offered relocation to job-rich urban areas; housing

programs aimed at nuclear families separated

extended family groups; children were sent to distant boarding schools; and, even after the general

demise of boarding schools, children were removed

from poor families and placed in long-term offreservation foster care. As a result, culturally appropriate means of social problem solving have been

displaced, and incentives to adapt those methods

to contemporary times and current problems have

been suppressed.

In many tribal communities, residents have no

one to turn to for help with a wide range of issues

except their law enforcement agencies. A telling

example came from the Director of the Juvenile

Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Gila

River Indian Community, who told us that she (and

the tribal police) regularly received phone calls

from parents requesting that the police arrest, and

the juvenile facility house, a problem child. Because

these parents had little experience of being parented

themselves, she concluded, their own parenting

skills were extremely limited.

However, when tribal members do turn to the police

with their problems, they encounter organizations

whose priorities have been shaped by a model of

policing that limits responses to a narrow band of

strategies and attention to a narrow band of crime

problems. For example, the acting Pima Agency

Superintendent at the time of our first site visit (the

nominal head of the then-BIA police department)

stated, “Law enforcement is law enforcement”—a
48

claim that seems to exempt Indian police departments from adapting their 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, eventually, escalate into real crimes. In addition, as tribal members conclude that the police are

insensitive and unresponsive to community needs,

support for the police diminishes. This, of course,

further isolates police and communities from each

other, and, in its worst form, the isolation develops

into barely concealed hostility.8 Partnership is not

possible in such an atmosphere.

Research on Effective Governing

Institutions in Indian Country

A substantial body of research suggests a roadmap

for understanding and beginning to remedy the problems with policing that are rooted in Federal policy.

Beginning in the 1970s, given the opportunity of

increased self-determination offered by PL 93–638,

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.

Data from the last U.S. Census (exhibit 8) illustrate

the diversity in reservation performance that underlies the Harvard Project research. On paper, the

Crow are one of the wealthiest societies in the

world. They own vast coal resources, extensive

timber supplies, rich wheat-growing land, and

arguably the best grazing grass in the West. In the

last decade, they have also received significant infusions of financial capital—totaling well over $100

million—through a number of highly remunerative

legal settlements. The Tribe’s emphasis on education gives it a rate of high school graduation that is

well above the average for Natives living on reservations. Yet, the community’s physical, financial,

and human capital generates a negligible annual

return, and the reservation unemployment rate is in

the 80–90 percent range.9 By contrast, some tribal

communities have been booming economically

and making rapid social progress. For example,

the Mississippi Choctaw’s home in Philadelphia,

Mississippi, is hardly rich in natural resources, but

the Tribe is now one of the largest employers in

Mississippi. More than 3,000 non-Indians commute

daily to work in the Choctaw’s manufacturing, service, and public-sector enterprises.10 All other things

equal, the different outcomes these two nations have

experienced can be attributed largely to differences

in government effectiveness. 

The Harvard Project’s research shows that one indicator of a tribal government’s ability to effectively

make and implement decisions is whether or not it

has increased control over its own institutions (seizing de facto sovereignty, and not merely de jure).

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. Yet that match between present and

prereservation political systems is not typical: The

U.S. Government created the 20th-century governments of most tribes, overriding indigenous institutions. In cases where tribes were fortunate enough

to avoid imposed constitutions or where, fortuitously, the imposed structure is well matched to prereservation forms, tribes are performing well; but

where the match is poor, tribes are struggling.11

With reference to Indian policing, the first 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—that have

increased their actual sovereignty—have experienced improved 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 reason sovereignty is crucial to successful development is clear: As long as

the BIA (or any other outside organization) has

decisionmaking authority, the actions, policies, and

procedures of tribal government will reflect outsiders’ agendas. For example, the BIA’s bureaucratic
Adults With Income Above BIA Poverty Line 1989 Unemployed Rates

Percentage Point

Reservation Change, 1977-1989a 1989 Percentage BLS-style calculationb Totalc

Flathead 16 39 11 41

White Mountain Apache 12 33 10 21

Cochiti Pueblo 10 43 52 22

Mescalero Apache 9 18 26 58

Mississippi Choctaw 9 36 50 27

Muckleshoot 6 16 61 57

Pine Ridge Sioux -1 21 56 73

Passamaquoddy -3 19 51 66

San Carlos Apache -7 16 90 62

Rosebud Sioux -10 4 46 93

Lummi -11 19 45 58

Hualapai -11 11 61 74

Yakama -12 20 67 63

Crow -12 11 48 78

Northern Cheyenne -15 29 40 55

All Reservation Indians -1 24 40 48

a. BIA poverty level was $5,000 in 1977 and $7,000 in 1989.

b. The “BLS-style calculation” of the unemployment rate measures adults looking for employment but not finding it.

c. The “total” unemployment rate measures the percent of the tribal workforce not working.

Sources: The table is from Cornell and Kalt (1992, 4). Data are from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1989).

49

standards of success (protecting a budget, expanding authority) will tend to be given more weight

than tribal standards, and results that meet these

external standards will be considered successful

even if they lead to lost opportunities, failed policies, or other bad outcomes for a tribe. Without tribal sovereignty over the institutions of government,

there is an injurious separation between the recipients of policy benefits and the bearers of policy

costs. An important study of tribes’ timber harvesting enterprises—some operated directly by the

BIA, others by tribes themselves under PL 93–638

contracts—provides hard evidence of this claim.

When tribes replaced the BIA administration of

forestry enterprises with their own management,

institutional and economic performance improved.

As predicted, tribes operated their timber programs

more efficiently than the BIA and received better

prices for the products sold (Krepps and Caves

1994; also, Krepps 1992).

As discussed, the Federal policies that regulate

Indian policing have the twin effect of reducing

tribal control and diffusing accountability for institutional performance. In our interviews, tribes regularly blamed Federal agencies for the poor state

of policing in Indian Country; not only were the

resources provided by Federal agencies inadequate,

but it also appeared that Federal policies were 

driven by a misreading of tribes’ real needs and 

priorities. On the other hand, representatives of

Federal agencies expressed skepticism about the

ability and intention of tribes to develop and manage effective police departments.

Exhibit 8. Indian Nations’ Diverse Economic Performance
Form of Cultural Match to Sustaining Significant 

Reservation Government Governmental Form? Economic Development?

Cochiti Pueblo Theocracy Yes Yes

Crow Athenian democracy No No

Flathead Parliamentary Yes Yes

Hualapai Strong chief executive No No

Mescalero Apache Strong chief executive Yes Yes

Muckleshoot Parliamentary Yes Yes

Northern Cheyenne Strong chief executive No No

Pine Ridge Sioux Strong chief executive No No

Rosebud Sioux Strong chief executive No No

San Carlos Apache Strong chief executive Unknown No

White Mountain Apache Strong chief executive Yes Yes

Yakama Athenian democracy No No

Notes: “Parliamentary” refers to governments in which the tribal chief executive is selected by the representative tribal council. “Strong chief executive”

refers to governments in which the tribal chief executive is directly elected by the tribe’s citizens. “Theocracy” indicates that the tribal religious leader or

leaders appoint the key tribal authorities and establish central tribal policies. “Athenian democracy” refers to a system in which democratic authority 

is vested in a tribal council, which is itself composed of all adult members of the tribe.

Source: Table derived from Cornell and Kalt (2000, 464).

demonstrate the ability to responsibly manage

its own criminal justice institutions. But Harvard

Project research indicates that this reasoning is

backward. Sovereignty brings with it accountability:

Being in charge makes tribal leaders and tribal citizens realize that their own resources and well-being

are at stake (Kalt 1997).

The second important lesson for Indian policing

from the Harvard Project research is the importance

of cultural match. Exhibit 9 summarizes the general

research findings. For each Indian nation listed, it

presents the contemporary form of government,

whether or not this structure matches prereservation

form, and whether or not the reservation economy

is growing. For example, the economically prosperous community of Cochiti Pueblo has never

given up its traditional theocracy and has no written

constitution. At the other extreme, modern Crow

government bears little or no resemblance to the

hierarchical and two-branch governmental structure

of prereservation Crow society, and economic conditions on the Crow reservation, as discussed above,

are dismal. While this list is not exhaustive, the pattern is strong enough to suggest that match matters.

A consonance between present and prereservation

The truth is a mixture of these impressions. 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. By contrast, if police perform poorly in

the typical American city, the citizenry signal their

leadership that performance must improve. If conditions do not change, elected officials and police

executives are at serious risk of being replaced. In

Indian Country, this direct line of accountability and

control is often absent. As in other areas of Indian

policy, it is both appropriate and beneficial for tribal

political and police department leaders to take on

those tasks; the more appropriate Federal roles are

to provide advice, technical assistance, and financial

aid and to support effective local policing efforts.

An additional observation that emerges from this

line of inquiry concerns timing. The legal and de

facto sovereignty of tribes has been subject to constant challenge, and it is frequently asserted that if

a tribe wishes to be sovereign, it must first establish

a sound, nondependent economy. A similar assertion is often made with regard to policing: If an

Indian community wants greater authority over

criminal justice administration, it must first

50

Exhibit 9. Cultural Match
51

institutional forms confers legitimacy on the methods

and outcomes of government decisionmaking and

channels political energy in productive directions.

Two examples from business and government

relations illustrate the dynamics of cultural match.

These examples highlight the aspect of government

structure that appears to be most important for institutional legitimacy and effectiveness: coherence

between institutional rules and citizens’ jointly held

expectations about who should hold authority, how

it should be exercised, and what the decisionmaking

structure should be.

The central government of the Oglala Sioux Tribe

of the Pine Ridge Reservation has sometimes tried

to launch tribally owned businesses, which are relatively common in Indian Country. Yet in Lakota

political culture, allegiance to authority is located

at the subtribal level of the reservation’s districts

(political divisions that more closely replicate the

quasi-autonomous family bands, or tiyospaye, of

prereservation days). Time and time again, when a

financial or management crisis arises for a business

promulgated by the central government, the lack of

connection to appropriate authority structures causes

oversight mechanisms to fail, support for the enterprise to wither, and an eventual business failure.12

Among the White Mountain Apache, the formal

role of the Tribe’s chief executive includes being

the lead negotiator of external agreements with

businesses and other governments. When a dispute

arose between the Tribe and the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service (USFWS) about appropriate means

for species protection, the Tribal Chairman gathered

a team of advisors and negotiated directly with the

USFWS on behalf of the Tribe. Today, because cultural norms support this activist, “presidential” leadership role (in fact, the Apache word for “leader” has

been variously interpreted as “our smart one,” “he

who directs,” or “he who convinces us”) (Cornell and

Kalt 1995, 420),13 tribal politicians, wildlife biologists, enterprise managers, and citizens are willing

to exert together the effort required to make this historic agreement work (“Tribe, U.S. Fish & Wildlife

Sign Historic Agreement” 1994; Wald 1995).

To reiterate, these positive and negative outcomes

result from matches and mismatches between indigenous and imposed norms and values. Unless there is

a match between these factors, the imposed norms

and values will consistently generate conflicts with

customary ways of doing business across social,

political, and economic dimensions of reservation

life. We observed the same effects with respect to

policing. The police officer at Tohono O’odham or

Gila River who aggressively confronts a suspect not

only will have offended longstanding tribal norms,

but also 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 mandates or otherwise perpetuates such conflicts, both public support for and the effectiveness

of the organization are diminished.

A final note about cultural match deserves attention:

It is important not to be naive about the possibilities. While research shows the potential that match

has to contribute to institutional success, there are,

unfortunately, no guarantees that prereservation

institutions will be effective in a contemporary setting. A society might find itself with institutions that

are firmly grounded in cultural norms and yet confront an environment that renders those institutions

ineffective. If old forms cannot be adapted to modern problems, a new institution will be necessary.

Then, the challenge to the group is to design one

that both makes cultural sense and works. Building

a legitimate institution that can meet contemporary challenges is the overarching goal.

In summary, two lines of evidence, one based on a

careful examination of the impact of Federal policy

on Indian policing and the other based on the effectiveness of governing institutions in Indian Country

generally, support this conclusion: The ongoing

dominance of the BIA and other Federal agencies

on policing in Indian Country has diffused accountability for Indian policing, limited tribal capacity to

improve policing, deterred tribes from strategic and

long-term planning, discouraged community priority setting, and prevented tribal communities and

police departments from aligning their priorities,

values, and resources. The severity of these issues

varies across tribes and, individually, their influence

may appear subtle. In combination, however, they

have a powerful negative effect on the overall quality of policing in Indian Country. Moreover, they are
52

concerns that an examination of Indian policing

based only on crime trends, management issues,

and budget constraints fails to bring into focus.

Notes

1. Hagan (1961, 1980) and Peak (1989), for example,

both note that reservations were extremely violent places,

where natural mechanisms of social control were disrupted

and armed bands preyed on the weak. 

2. 24 Stat. 388, also known as the Dawes Act (see Canby

1998, 22).

3. Kelling and Moore (1998) coined the phrase “political

model.” Fogelson (1977) discusses the alliance of police

with urban political machines (chapter 1).

4. An “agency” is the smallest BIA administrative unit.

Most large Indian nations have a dedicated agency;

smaller nations are grouped together or attached to an

agency that primarily serves a larger nation. This structure adds to the problems cited in the text—in multitribe

agencies, authority over a single tribe’s patrol function

quickly devolves to a tribal outsider whose interests and

responsibilities are extremely diffuse.

5. Project D.A.R.E. is a school-based substance abuse

prevention program that is taught by specially trained

police officers in schools across the United States and

in other countries.

6. Meeting of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai

Tribal Council, July 16, 1997.

7. Interview with the Chairwoman, Confederated Salish

and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, July

18, 1997.

8. For example, on ride-alongs we saw officers “patrol”

by driving through the front and back yards of homes,

shining their floodlights into residents’ porches, kitchens,

and living rooms.

9. As in the final column of exhibit 8, this rate has been

adjusted to account for those who are unemployed but

have stopped actively seeking a job.

10. It may be tempting to credit such phenomenal growth

to gaming, a niche market opportunity available to Indian

nations because of their political sovereignty. But the

example of the Mississippi Choctaw is telling: Economic growth started in the 1980s, long before July 1994,

when the Tribe opened its casino. Furthermore, Harvard

Project research is general enough to suggest that

although gaming may contribute significant financial

capital to some Native economies, even casinos thrive

only when they are underwritten by the basic supports of

effective governance.

11. This point is based on research by Stephen Cornell

and Joseph P. Kalt, especially Cornell and Kalt (1995).

The independent variable “match” was derived by comparing tribes’ immediate prereservation governmental

systems (as documented in ethnographic sources) with

their current systems. Prereservation Indian societies

can be characterized as self-governing societies that had

passed the tests of environmental adaptation to that point

in time; thus, the indigenous, diverse cultures of the

tribes were embedded in their political systems.

12. One dramatic example of this dynamic is described in

“Nebraska Sioux Lean Beef,” a teaching case study about

a meat-packing plant (Jorgensen 1990).

13. Original sources of quotes are Grenville Goodwin,

The Social Organization of the Western Apache

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); Morris E.

Opler, “Lipan Apache Culture,” Southern Journal of

Anthropology 9(1953): 92–95; and Tribal Cultural

Director, White Mountain Apache Tribe, personal 

interview, 1987.
53

Chapter 6. Conclusions and

Recommendations

The preceding chapters demonstrate that the task of

policing in Indian Country is difficult and complex.

Reservation police confront significant crime problems and an array of related social concerns. They

struggle under the pressures of limited resources,

answer to multiple authorities, and function within

a complicated jurisdictional web. Departments frequently operate without strategic direction from

their tribal governments and lack methods for communicating directly with their service population,

deficiencies that limit their knowledge of and ability

to address community goals. Consequently, it can

be difficult for police in Indian Country to generate

community support for—let alone partnership in—

their activities. These problems, concerns, and challenges have a substantial effect on the quality and

effectiveness of policing in Indian Country.

We argue that many of these issues are linked in

important ways to Federal policy. Certainly, there is

strong evidence of long, 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.

Reversing this failure through the creation of more

indigenous policing institutions may give Indian

police departments purchase on many of the problems they face. Two important bodies of research

and experience inform this conclusion and the recommendations to tribal and nontribal policymakers

that follow from it. The first body of information,

discussed in depth above and summarized below,

demonstrates the influence that appropriate and effective governing institutions have on the successful

development of reservation societies (recognizing

that police constitute a governing institution of central importance). The second body of information,

which describes the experiences of communities

whose police departments practice “community

policing,” is introduced below. These two distinct

bodies of research—with strikingly similar conclusions—provide critical lessons for building a foundation for policing in Indian Country, a foundation

that ensures strong public support for the police

function and that effectively leverages a wide range

of resources (not just funding, but political, social,

and cultural capital as well) in the service of

addressing crime.

Before proceeding, we highlight an important

aspect of our work: While we are critical of past

Federal policy, we assert that Federal agencies can

play a useful future role in assisting tribes as they

build a new foundation for policing. Many Federal

agencies are directing increased attention and considerable resources to efforts to better protect tribal

communities from crime and to better support tribal

criminal justice agencies.1 The BIA has made substantial progress in improving training and practice,

especially with regard to the investigative function.

Police professionals within the BIA’s Division of

Law Enforcement Services possess significant

resources in terms of experience and expertise.

Many processes already in place, such as the 638

contracting process, could be modified to assist

tribes as they undertake efforts to fundamentally

rethink policing. The following recommendations

suggest how these resources can best be used to

improve policing in Indian Country.

Reprise of Research on Effective

Governing Institutions

Research on Indian economies indicates that economic and social problems can be solved only if

tribes first focus on building strong and effective

governing institutions. This task properly begins

with increasing tribal control of institutions, an

activity that has been part and parcel of tribes’ drive

for substantially increased sovereignty—which has

itself been the dominant political force in Indian
54

Country over the last three decades. Thus, it is no

coincidence that many of the tribes that have been

most active in reclaiming sovereignty are also those

that have most successfully combated the problems

of poverty.

The research on Indian economies further concludes

that institutional design affects institutional effectiveness. Strong and effective governing institutions

reflect the values and priorities (the culture) of the

community. This match increases the probability

that the population will support the methods and

outcomes of government action.

In general, Indian policing has continued on a trajectory outside of the national movement toward

increased tribal sovereignty.2 Likewise, the idea that

institutions might be tailored to fit tribal conceptions

of the appropriate methods for social control is not

common among Indian police and policymakers.

Yet if tribes took greater control over the management and design of policing, it is likely that, as in

the economic sphere, their criminal justice institutions would become more effective. Parallel to the

research findings on Indian economies, some of the

major benefits of greater self-determination and cultural match in policing might include the following:

● Focused accountability.

● Increased likelihood of a consonance between

the capabilities of policing institutions and the

demands made on them by the social, cultural,

and political environments in which they operate.

● Increased public support for the police mission.

The Possibilities for Community

Policing in Indian Country

“Community policing is a problem-solving partnership between the police and the community that is

incorporated throughout a police department’s culture and operations. In community policing, the

police and the community collaboratively analyze

problems, set operational priorities, and implement

strategies appropriate for the resolution of each

problem” (Michaelson, Kelling, and Wasserman

1988). In other words, because community policing

is a method by which communities lend their

authority to the police enterprise, see their norms

and values (their culture) reflected in the police

mission, and employ their considerable formal

and informal resources to address crime and other

social concerns, it gives rise to institutions that

have the important characteristics cited above—

self-determination and cultural appropriateness.

Experience and research show that the community

policing strategy enhances the capacity of police

to address crime and to help communities become

strong, independent, and resourceful. It leads to

more effective policing (see, for example, Sparrow,

Moore, and Kennedy 1990; Perspectives on Policing

1988–1993; Moore and Poethig 1998). In sum, the

growing body of experience and research on community policing is remarkably congruent with the

findings on effective governing institutions in Indian

Country. We conclude that 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.

A department practices community policing by

supporting police officers in the activities that

communities most demand of them, not only in

the narrow band of activities that constitute reactive

crime fighting. Departments implement community

policing by promoting a broader definition of the

police function than is permitted in the professional

approach. In this definition, an improved quality of

community life becomes a desirable outcome of

good police service, which means that such activities as order maintenance, conflict resolution, and

problem solving become acceptable and important

police duties.

The results of this broader definition are significant.

For example, practices that bring police into close

contact with the public have always been politically

popular, but research shows that they are advantageous in other ways as well. They contribute to

community life, reduce fear, increase citizen satisfaction with police, improve police attitudes toward

citizens, and increase the morale and job satisfaction of police (Trojanowicz 1982). Similarly, police

activities that both engage citizens in solving problems and provide citizens with new tools (such as

conflict resolution capacities) contribute to community strength, independence, and resourcefulness

(Goldstein 1990). Establishing and following 
55

practices with these wider effects is a central task

of the community policing approach.

The broader definition of the police function also

helps align police priorities and values with those

of the community (which, as we have seen, is rarely

the case in Indian Country). In large part, the alignment occurs as the source of authorization for police

activities shifts from professional or bureaucratic

standards to the citizens being policed. Where community policing is already practiced, police have

realized that ambiguity inevitably surrounds the

new kinds of police activity and that, to make their

interventions effective, they must regularly seek

authorization from citizens. Police departments have

learned that professional or bureaucratic authority—

especially that which tends to isolate police and

insulate them from community or neighborhood

influences—decreases as citizens contribute more

to defining problems and identifying solutions. In

this sense, community policing relies on an intimate

relationship between police and citizens, a relationship that is determined less by past practice than

by the particular attributes of the community to be

policed. The tight linkage between police action and

citizen authorization is also a locale-specific application of a broader idea in law enforcement that

“behind the badge is the Constitution.” That is, to

be legitimate in the eyes of citizens, the actual ways

in which police maintain order, resolve conflicts,

and solve problems must themselves uphold the

priorities, norms, and values of the community.

Police departments implementing community policing have found that community concerns are often

important indicators of ongoing, underlying problems that might escalate into crimes if ignored.

Today, community policing’s problem-solving

approach and attention to order maintenance are

widely recognized as playing important roles in

communities’ efforts to rebuild their neighborhoods

and in increasing the quality of community life.3

The non-Native experience with community policing and data from our site visits suggest that community policing has great promise in Indian Country.

For example, many 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. The

overarching lesson of community policing is that if

reservation police were to pay attention to these

problems and were to use credible tribal approaches

as remedies, they would become more effective

problem solvers, more respected by tribal citizens,

and better able to “nip in the bud” problems with

the potential to escalate into more serious crimes.

Despite the success of community policing, it is

not a wholesale prescription for transforming police

departments and eliminating crime. Nonetheless,

we conclude that, by changing the foundation on

which policing occurs, community policing is the

appropriate first step for improving policing in

Indian Country. For any given Indian nation, the

systems that animate and guide policing—such as

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 needs, beliefs, priorities, and resources.4

The tribe’s policing institutions would then become

more indigenous (or self-determined), more likely

to build upon and reinforce important cultural

norms and values, and more valuable to the

community.

Changing an Indian police department’s policies

and procedures is one practical way that this linkage

between policing systems and tribal priorities might

occur. Depending on the dispatcher’s assessment of

a call, for example, a local elder or other accepted

authority could accompany the responding officer;

in many instances, the officer might be there only to

support the elder’s authority (or vice versa). Such an

effort would simultaneously lend credibility to the

modern police function and show respect for important tribal traditions. Similarly, if a tribal value is to

talk things out (as in O’odham culture), new policies and procedures might specify situations in

which this approach would be appropriate and offer

guidelines for ensuring that such conversations were

effective.5 Different policies and procedures could

be developed for cultures in which the direct, physical assertion of authority is appropriate (the Turtle

Mountain Chippewa might fit this description); the

challenge would be to develop guidelines that made

the physical exercise of authority controlled and

also effective in maintaining order.
56

Another approach might be to modify both the

organization of a department and its personnel system to reflect tribal culture. In many of the interviews we conducted at Fort Berthold, interviewees

mourned the decline of the Black Mouth Society, an

association of respected, mature men who historically acted as the police for these tribes. A practical

arrangement that would strengthen important traditional values, draw on the cultural power of the

Society for greater authority, and still meet modern

needs might be a two-tier department in which

junior officers serve an apprenticeship under the

supervision of tenured, highly experienced, and

well-qualified senior officers (in effect, a Black

Mouth Society) (Bowers 1992; Gilman and Schneider

1987; Lowie 19036

). The selection, promotion, and

evaluation of officers could be geared not only to

their ability to carry out the conventional functions

of policing (conducting good investigations, driving

safely, making arrests), but also to their fitness to

serve as members of the Society.

In reflecting on this description of community policing and its possible application in Indian Country,

we emphasize that the model is not a tactic or set of

tactics but, rather, a process by which police work

with communities to establish shared priorities, to

support community efforts to address crime, and to

obtain the authorization of communities to act on

their behalf. Thus, a department practicing community policing is characterized not merely by a set of

general tactics, such as neighborhood foot patrols or

stable geographic beats, but by the fact that it has

found multiple (and usually locale-specific) ways to

encourage officers to pay attention to citizens’ priorities and values, to respond to the fears citizens feel

in the face of certain social problems and crimes,

and to employ programs that emphasize collaboration between citizens and police. Even so, the confusion between tactics and process (sometimes called

strategy or philosophy) has discouraged police in

Indian Country from moving beyond the professional approach to using the community policing

approach in the manner we describe. On numerous

occasions, police leadership and policymakers

working in Indian Country informed us that staff

shortages coupled with the tremendous distances

characteristic of western reservations—that is,

obstacles to tactics—make community policing an

impractical goal. In our view, however, community

policing can be implemented in practical ways that

do not compromise the effectiveness of police. It

should not require excessive funds and should not

reduce a department’s ability to carry out its mission. Instead, existing departmental values, priorities, and resources can be reoriented to community

values, priorities, and resources. Misunderstandings

about the requirements of community policing should

not be allowed to stand in the way of its implementation (see Kennedy 1993; Sparrow 1988).

What the Federal Government Can Do

We recommend that the Federal Government pursue

a more fully developed and more cohesive policy of

self-determination in Indian policing. This approach

requires amending several important Federal programs and activities, including the 638 contracting

process, the way various agencies invest in policing

in Indian Country, the training of BIA and other

Indian Country police, and the administration of law

enforcement within the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Our specific recommendations follow.

The Federal contracting process is a crucial program

to which changes should be made. Contracting

should be about more than gaining control of a

stream of money, and we therefore think that the

process should emphasize not only tribal management (the present focus) but also organizational

planning. Because contracted police departments

do not need to replicate the BIA departments they

replace, the contracting process should encourage

tribes to rethink the way policing occurs. To do this,

the Federal Government may need to invest directly

in qualitative change. One possibility is to offer

police department and political planners incentives

to explore the specific implications of community

policing for their department, tribal government,

and nation and to pursue organizational change

based on the findings. Yet, any amendments to PL

93–638 policy should avoid making the requirements for contracting more stringent. We believe

that tribes can think best about policing when they

control policing; thus, Federal contracting policy

should offer assistance in ways that both improve

policing and promote sovereignty.7

Contracting is only one channel by which the

Federal Government invests in Indian Country

policing. Indeed, many departments and agencies 

of the Federal Government invest in Indian Country
57

policing, and the way they do so is important. Past

investment activities have tended to have an ad hoc

quality, and while many have had positive effects, a

more coherent investment policy could increase the

usefulness of future spending.

We propose that two related principles guide

Federal spending (regardless of the department or

agency initiating the funding) on policing in Indian

Country. First, investments should strengthen tribal

managers’ ability to think in new ways about policing. That is, investments should encourage both

departmental and political managers to address

critical questions:

● How does and how should policing promote

the nation’s goals to be more resourceful and

independent?

● What policing strategies are particularly effective

at accomplishing this?

● What tribal norms and values should be embodied

in tribal policing practices?

● How can tribal political and police department

leaders ensure that this happens?

Second, investments should strengthen tribal capacity

to form and administer police departments that are

more self-determined. As noted with respect to contracting, investments should not only assist tribes

financially, but also increase their organizational and

strategic capacity to oversee reservation policing.

Funding is particularly vital to help tribes reform the

organizational structure of their criminal justice

systems (so that, if desired, they can become less

compartmentalized), rewrite police policies and procedures (to create a culturally and task-appropriate

set), professionalize personnel systems (including

recruitment, training, and promotion requirements),

and develop strategic planning entities.

Two examples reveal how investments that do not

accord with these principles may misdirect police

department and political policymakers. The first is

Federal spending on technology. While the need to

improve the collection and management of information in Indian Country police departments is pronounced, a warning is in order. The statistics that

such systems generate emphasize only one part of

the police mission—fighting crime. Other roles that

police might play in promoting community values

and ensuring order and security are deemphasized.

In other words, isolated investments in policing technology can lead departmental and political leaders

away from the challenge of thinking in new ways

about policing. Tribes and Federal policymakers

with an interest in community policing (or any other

approaches that generate new police roles and responsibilities) must bear this outcome in mind and, if

possible, support investments in technology by funding activities that help connect the information system to the tribe’s other important policing goals.8

A second example is the response of national-level

law enforcement authorities to reports of rising

crime in Indian Country: They have called for the

assignment of more Federal officers to Indian

Country. These officers are already making their

presence felt. They are members of Federal drug

enforcement and antigang violence task forces,

Border Patrol officers, agents of the U.S. Attorney’s

Office, and FBI agents. While many Indian police

departments want the additional resources that an

increased Federal presence brings, many Indian

communities see this increased presence as a further

loss of sovereignty (or even as an occupation). From

the standpoint of self-determination, such fractionated

injections of resources prevent tribes from developing truly comprehensive responses to their social

disorder and crime problems, especially as they are

complicated by offense and geographical jurisdiction

issues. It would be better to spend the same money

on Indian policing directly—so that a tribe could

develop its own targeted strategy for dealing with its

particular problems—and to have similar officers

and agencies available to serve as professional advisors and partners in the implementation of tribally

driven anticrime programs. The principles we propose push investment in this more fruitful direction.9

Our final comment on investment is that increasing

the impact of the current flow of funds to Indian

Country policing should not become an argument

for freezing or limiting investment. On the contrary,

we believe that funding should increase. In part,

this is because police in Indian Country operate

with a limited resource base relative to the crime

problems they face. It is also because of long-term

underinvestment in the reservation criminal justice

system overall.
58

Federal policy concerning the training of police

officers serving Indian Country must also change.

Most of the training that tribal police receive is provided through State police academies, which have

little focus on either community policing or the

important economic, geographic, social, and cultural features of policing in Indian Country. These

deficits might be eliminated by adjusting the current

curriculum at the federally administered Indian

Policing Academy in Artesia, New Mexico, to support the vision of tribal policing offered in this paper

and by expanding the number of academies to adequately serve all of Indian Country. At the same

time, we acknowledge that municipal, county, and

State police are often more comfortable working

with Indian police (and vice versa) if they have all

attended the same training academy. If tribes continue to choose to send their police to State academies, the Federal Government could fund additional

training in the self-determined approach to reservation policing we describe. These courses could be

included in the curricula of State training academies or could simply be coordinated with the State

offerings. They must, however, be more than minor

postscripts to State curricula; they must provide

substantive training that is appropriately tailored

to the demands of policing in Indian Country.10

A final Federal policy that deserves careful consideration (and possible amendment) is the centralization of authority over all BIA law enforcement

functions in Area Offices and the elimination of

any agency-level control. While this reorganization

eliminates the separate lines of authority over criminal investigation and patrol that we criticized earlier

and might increase the professionalization of police

management within the BIA, tribes appear to appreciate access to a local reporting structure. In fact,

loss of local authority was an explicit issue for two

of the four tribes that we studied in depth. At Gila

River, key tribal administrators protested centralization, and their objections led to the early and

untimely departure of the acting BIA police captain

charged with preparing the department for contracting. At Fort Berthold, centralization led many community members to agitate for contracting. It may

be better for Area Office policing supervisors—

experienced officers themselves—to shift their

focus from managing policing for noncontracted

tribes to serving as professional advisors to all area

tribes, so that they become real partners in the

process of rethinking reservation policing and

implementing new, tribally driven efforts.

What Tribes Can Do

Our primary recommendation to tribes has been laid

out earlier: They should pursue real self-determination

in Indian policing. This is a process in which Indian

nations seek both the financial and organizational

capacity to oversee policing; find ways for the

community, tribal leadership, and police to think

strategically about policing; and weave culturally

appropriate methods into policing. Significantly, the

community policing philosophy advocates a similar

process. According to this approach, reservation

police and the tribal community “together analyze

problems, set operational priorities, and implement

strategies appropriate for the resolution of each problem” (Michaelson, Kelling, and Wasserman 1988).

Thus, our correlate recommendation is that Indian

nations strive to implement their own versions of

community policing. We have a few additional recommendations for tribes, which may increase the

effectiveness of new policing approaches. These

recommendations concern tribes’ commitments to

fairness and impartiality and their responsibility

for training.

First, we recommend that tribes commit themselves to developing impartial police departments.

Typically, reservation police are indicted for not

having this characteristic. In some cases, political,

clan, and family relationships influence police practice and policy. Many interviewees claimed that

ties of this nature between suspects and department

members often influenced the disposition of crimes.

In other cases, political dynamics drive the management of departments. For example, corrupt tribal

governments co-opt police departments to protect

illegitimate activities and enterprises from scrutiny

or prosecution. Cases of nepotism in hiring and promoting police officers and staff are also in evidence

(see Naranjo et al. 1996). Of course, these problems

are similar in character and frequency to those that

plague small and large police departments outside

of Indian Country. For them, one important solution has been to develop and publicize sound 

personnel policies—eliminating or minimizing

nepotism, for example—so that the department

can maintain its credibility among citizens and
59

with other government agencies. Tribes would 

benefit from similar policies.

Second, we recommend that tribes themselves take

an active role in training police officers. If the goals

of tribal policing include preserving and promoting important tribal norms and values, the training

officers receive at State or Federal academies is

insufficient. Local police training and education is

necessary to give officers a better understanding of

the government and culture of the tribe they serve

and a better idea of how policing gives meaning to

those principles. Tribe-specific research, preferably

conducted by tribal members and tribal police

themselves, is the only real way to meet this goal—

although the Federal Government could productively

support this process in a number of ways, such as

direct financial support or various forms of technical assistance.

Conclusion

Our core conclusions and recommendations focus

on a fundamental issue: Tribes, with the support of

the Federal Government, must reconsider the foundations of policing on American Indian reservations.

Our supporting recommendations grow out of this

fundamental issue and are relatively simple. First,

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

can productively inform the development of Federal

policy. Second, this same evidence and experience

provide the necessary starting points for tribes as

they undertake the task of rethinking policing. We

do not recommend that Federal and tribal policymakers direct their full attention and resources to

increased funding for reservation police departments,

the development of specialized crime-fighting task

forces, and improved technology. Although these

activities have both appeal and short-term potential, in the long run, they will add little to the ability

of Indian police departments and tribal communities

to independently address the substantial problems

they face.

In conclusion, neither community policing nor the

research on the design of effective governing institutions in Indian Country offers a wholesale prescription for transforming police departments and

eliminating crime. Instead they provide a framework for linking research and action in designing

approaches to policing that both make cultural

sense and work. The overarching goal is the creation of legitimate policing institutions that are

capable of meeting contemporary challenges

(which may be as divergent as neighborhood disputes, family violence, and the manufacture and

sale of methamphetamines).

Two possible misinterpretations of this statement

deserve mention. In recommending that tribes

rethink policing in the context of culture, we are not

recommending that they reflexively resurrect dormant prereservation methods of social control and

policing, nor are we giving a blanket endorsement

to the restorative justice policies now popular in

many Indian (and non-Indian) jurisdictions (Young

1995). Rather, our advice to tribes is to create

workable, nation-specific policing institutions and

approaches that are informed by traditional customs. The workability criterion means that the

policing policies and practices individual tribes

develop must recognize the reality of day-to-day life

and politics in Indian Country and must be capable

of getting things done in this “real world.” Police

department and political leadership should not be

left vulnerable to charges that they have failed to

address modern crime problems (ranging from gang

violence to driving while under the influence of

alcohol). Our argument is simply that basing policing activities on a cultural foundation is a powerful

means of establishing legitimacy, and that when

policing activities are viewed by the population as

legitimate, the police may become more effective.11

The nation-specific criterion highlights the problem

with implementing restorative justice approaches

across the board. Anthropological evidence makes

clear that while many Native American cultures

employed such approaches to ensure adherence to

social norms, many others employed strikingly

authoritarian, retributive methods of social control.

In sum, establishing culturally appropriate policing

means that, on a tribe-by-tribe basis, Indian nations

must make a substantial investment in identifying

social norms relevant to policing and the function

and influence of these norms in contemporary life.

We feel that this can be accomplished only as tribes

make a strong, sustained commitment to fundamentally rethinking their approach to policing.
60

Finally, we note that the ultimate success of rethinking policing—with an eye toward increased selfdetermination, cultural appropriateness, and Native

approaches to community policing—depends on

research. The agenda must include research that

helps identify the appropriate process for undertaking this initiative on a tribal level (perhaps using

lessons learned from successful constitutional reform

efforts) and research that helps practitioners understand how the approach we advocate can be reconciled both with the contemporary thicket of State

and Federal jurisdictional issues and with PL 83–280.

Besides the cultural research noted above, triballevel research that focuses on strengthening tribal

managers’ ability to think in new ways about policing

and on helping tribes’ political and police department

leaders ensure change will be particularly important.

Notes

1. See, for example, Executive Committee for Indian

Country Law Enforcement Improvements (1997);

National Institute of Justice Strategic Planning Meeting

on Crime and Justice Research in Indian Country, Portland,

Oregon, October 14–15, 1998; and Summit on Charting

the Future of Justice in Indian Country, Washington,

D.C., October 28, 1997.

2. This is despite the fact that policing institutions are

of such central importance to government that indigenous administration should be a top priority for tribes.

On a fundamental theoretical level, the gift of people to

their sovereign government—and the defining right of

government—is the right to wield coercive power over

the citizenry. It is impossible to be truly sovereign without exercising real self-determination in policing. See

Hobbes (1651, especially chapter 17). 

3. Examples of successful initiatives are found in Sparrow,

Moore, and Kennedy (1990); Kelling and Coles (1996);

and Braga et al. (1999).

4. Again, it is important to note that critical elements

of policing are determined by the particular (or unique)

attributes of a community and, therefore, that community

policing in Indian Country may look dramatically different from tribe to tribe.

5. Many writers stress the importance of talking things

out in O’odham culture. Several sources are Joseph,

Spicer, and Chesky (1949); King and Jones (1974,

125–136); Teague (1993); and Underhill (1940, 1969).

We observe, however, that although both the Tohono

O’odham and Akimel O’odham have similar cultural

roots, their recent history is quite different. Thus, the

two communities might find markedly different ways to

incorporate cultural values into their policing methods;

the differences would not imply that one group was less

“Indian” or less “O’odham,” but would simply reflect

modern cultural differences. 

6. Also Cora Baker interview, above, note 29, chapter 4.

7. In the current political climate, this will be much

more difficult than it sounds. Since the autumn of 1998,

Congressional budget battles have slowed the implementation of new 638 and self-governance contracts.

Preventing contracting—either through overly strict

contracting requirements or a lack of funds—does

Indian policing no good. In fact, it perpetuates the negative influence of Federal policy on policing, by allowing

community needs and concerns to fester, department

management and facilities to deteriorate further, and

“catch as catch can” programs (drug enforcement or

anti-gang violence programs, for example) to take the

place of comprehensive strategic planning. 

8. With regard to management information systems,

additional caveats are important. First, increasing the

availability of automated call management and management information systems does not change the fact that

much of the data collected by these systems is of poor

quality. The data can be improved only by breaking down

the social and cultural barriers that exist between police

and many tribal communities, and thought should be

given to this problem. Second, automated information

systems will provide needed information to tribes, but

the technology and training that accompany these systems must recognize that the typical department in Indian

Country is much smaller than its urban and suburban

counterparts. These small staffs could be easily swamped

by demands expressed through 911 systems, inhibiting

their ability to do sound proactive planning. On the other

hand, small departments will benefit greatly from systems that enable them to identify the truly high-priority

calls and to focus on the underlying problems driving

crime. Third, both police personnel and tribal leadership

must be educated on how to best use the data in the

service of broad tribal goals.

9. The COPS program also places federally funded officers in Indian Country, but because the tribe has great

flexibility in how it uses these officers, the program is

less likely to divert police and tribal policymakers from

their most important tasks. As noted in chapter 4, the

problems with the COPS program are much different in

nature: Its restrictions on Federal employment create a

dual authority structure in BIA-managed departments and
61

further complicate oversight issues; the lack of training

and equipment funds in COPS grants may create a group

of officers with inferior capacities; and the statute’s sunset clause and lack of specific phase-out provisions will

severely test the already limited resources of Indian

police departments and, thus, have a larger impact in

Indian Country than elsewhere. 

10. Notably, this discussion also implies that State-level

changes in training will be necessary. Whether or not

tribal police attend State academies, those institutions

must inform their students of the appropriateness of

Indian self-determination over policing and of the professionalism of Indian police. Police graduating from State

academies must be prepared to work with all of their

colleagues—in-State, out-of-State, Federal, and tribal.

11. Of course, the opposite configuration also presents

a problem. Workable but illegitimate institutions are as

unhelpful as legitimate but unworkable ones. If a department makes a limited set of cosmetic changes that leave

in place old ways of doing business—no matter how

functional—it will not succeed in better aligning the

efforts of police departments with community priorities. 
63

References

Barker, Michael L. 1998. Policing in Indian Country.

New York: Harrow and Heston.

Barlow, David. 1994. Minorities policing minorities as a

strategy of social control: A historical analysis of tribal

police in the United States. Criminal Justice History

15:141–163.

Bordewich, Fergus M. 1996. How to succeed in business:

Follow the Choctaws’ lead. Smithsonian 26 (12)(March):

70–78.

Bowers, Alfred. 1992. Hidatsa social and ceremonial

organization. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Braga, Anthony A., David L. Weisburd, Elin J. Waring,

Lorraine Green Mazerolle, William Spelman, and Francis

Gajewski. 1999. Problem-oriented policing in violent

crime places: A randomized controlled experiment.

Criminology 37 (3)(August):541–580.

Bureau of the Census. 1998. Statistical abstract of the

United States, 1997. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department

of Commerce.

———. 1995. Housing of American Indians on reservations—Equipment and fuels. Statistical Brief. Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, April.

———. 1993. 1990 census of population, social and

economic characteristics: American Indian and Alaska

Native areas. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Commerce.

Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1998a. American Indians today.

Retrieved from the Bureau of Indian Affairs Web page:

http://www.doi.gov/bia.aitoday.

———. 1998b. Report on Indian lands. Retrieved

from the Bureau of Indian Affairs Web page:

http://www.doi.gov/bia/realty/report.html.

———. 1996. Indian service population and labor force

estimates, 1995. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

the Interior.

———. 1989. Indian service population and labor force

estimates. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the

Interior.

Bureau of Indian Affairs, Division of Law Enforcement

Services. 1995a. Listing of reservations where Major

Crimes Act applies by area office and type of law

enforcement program. Albuquerque: Bureau of Indian

Affairs, Aberdeen Area Office. March 31.

———. 1995b. Indian law enforcement history.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior.

February.

———. 1975. Indian Reservation Criminal Justice Task

Force analysis: 1974–1975. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of the Interior.

Bureau of Justice Statistics. 1998. Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics—1997. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of Justice.

Canby, William C., Jr. 1998. American Indian law in a

nutshell. 3d ed. St. Paul, Minnesota: West Group.

Civil Rights Act of 1968. 25 U.S.C.A. § 1302 (7).

Claiborne, William. 1998. Crime in Indian Country rises

amid crumbling law enforcement: Tribal police underfunded, under-manned. San Francisco Chronicle, 16

October.

Clark, Jacob R. 1996a. No reservations about gangs:

Urban youth-crime problem infects Indian Country.

Law Enforcement News 22 (447)(June 15):1, 6.

———. 1996b. Complex job in changing times: Law

enforcement in Indian Country is anything but easy.

Law Enforcement News 22 (443)(April 15):1, 6–7.

Cordner, Gary. Editor. 1994. Neighborhood-oriented

policing in rural communities: A program planning

guide. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,

Bureau of Justice Assistance, August.
64

Cornell, Stephen, and Joseph P. Kalt. 2000. Where’s the

glue? Institutional and cultural foundation of American

Indian economic development. The Journal of SocioEconomics 29:443-470. 

———. 1998. Sovereignty and nation-building: The

development challenges in Indian Country today.

American Culture and Research Journal 22:187–214.

———. 1995. Where does economic development really

come from? Constitutional rule among the contemporary

Sioux and Apache. Economic Inquiry 33 (July):402–426.

———. 1993. Culture as explanation in racial and 

ethnic inequality: American Indians, reservation poverty,

and collective action. Report Series. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard Project on American Indian

Economic Development, April.

———. 1992. What can tribes do? Strategies and

institutions in American Indian economic development.

Los Angeles: UCLA Press.

———. 1991. Where’s the glue? Institutional bases of

American Indian economic development. Report Series.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Project on American

Indian Economic Development, February.

Cornell, Stephen, Joseph P. Kalt, Matthew B. Krepps,

and Jonathan Taylor. 1998. American Indian gaming policy and its socioeconomic effects. Report to the National

Gaming Impact Study, Commission. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: The Economics Resource Group, July.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. 1983. American

Indians, American justice. Austin: University of Texas

Press.

DOJ seeks 4.4% raise for FY99, with prevention programs increasing 19%. 1998. Crime Prevention News,

5 February.

Driver, Harold E. 1969. Indians of North America. 2d ed.,

rev. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Elias, Gail L. 1998. Criminal justice data collection

issues in Indian Country. Paper presented at the National

Institute of Justice Strategic Planning Meeting on Crime

and Justice Research in Indian Country. Portland,

Oregon, October 14–15.

Executive Committee for Indian Country Law Enforcement

Improvements. 1997. Final report to the Attorney General

and the Secretary of the Interior. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of Justice, Criminal Division, October.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. 1997. Crime in the

United States, 1996. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department

of Justice.

Fogelson, Robert M. 1977. Big-city police. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

General Accounting Office. 1997. A profile of the Indian

gaming industry. Report to the Chairman, Committee

on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives.

Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, May.

General Allotment Act of 1887. 24 Stat. 388 (also known

as the Dawes Act).

Gilman, Carolyn, and Mary Jane Schneider. 1987. The

way to independence: Memories of a Hidatsa Indian

family, 1840–1920. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical

Society Press.

Goldberg, Carole, and Heather Singleton. 1998. Research

priorities: Law enforcement in Public Law 280 States.

Paper presented at the National Institute of Justice

Strategic Planning Meeting on Crime and Justice Research

in Indian Country. Portland, Oregon, October 14–15.

Goldblatt, Melissa. 1998. Getting a grip on gangs: Tribes

dish up tough love to stop gang membership. American

Indian Report 14 (4)(April):26–27.

Goldstein, Herman. 1990. Problem-oriented policing.

New York: McGraw-Hill.

———. 1977. Policing a free society. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Ballinger.

Gossage, J. Phillip, and Philip A. May. 1998. Substance

abuse and crime in Indian Country. Paper presented

at the National Institute of Justice Strategic Planning

Meeting on Crime and Justice Research in Indian

Country. Portland, Oregon, October 14–15.

Greenfeld, Lawrence A. 1998. Alcohol and crime:

An analysis of national data on the prevalence of alcohol involvement in crime. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics,

April.

Greenfeld, Lawrence A., and Steven K. Smith. 1999.

American Indians and crime. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics,

February.

Hagan, William T. 1980. Indian police and judges.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
65

———. 1961. American Indians. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Hell Gate Treaty of 1855. 12 Stat. 975.

Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. Leviathan. London: Andrew

Crooke.

Indian Health Service, Office of Planning, Evaluation,

and Legislation, Division of Program Statistics. 1997.

Trends in Indian health, 1996. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services.

Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance

Act of 1975. U.S. Public Law 638. 93d Congress.

25 U.S.C.A. § 450 et seq.

Indian tribal courts and justice. 1995. Special issue.

Judicature 79 (3)(November–December).

Jorgensen, Miriam. 1990. Nebraska Sioux lean beef, part

A. Teaching case study in tribal management for Oglala

Lakota College. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard

Project on American Indian Economic Development,

August.

Joseph, Alice, Rosamond B. Spicer, and Jane Chesky.

1949. The desert people. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Kaestle, John A. 1989. Designing a new police facility.

Police Chief 56 (10)(October):119–126.

Kalt, Joseph P. 1997. Policies for promoting American

Indian economic development. Statement to U.S. Senate

Committee on Indian Affairs. September 17.

Kelling, George L., and Catherine M. Coles. 1996.

Fixing broken windows: Restoring order and reducing

crime in our communities. New York: The Free Press.

Kelling, George L., and Mark H. Moore. 1988. The

evolving strategy of policing. Perspectives on policing.

No. 4. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,

November.

Kennedy, David M. 1993. The strategic management

of police resources. Perspectives on policing. No. 14.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, January.

Kilborn, Peter T. 1992. Sad distinction for the Sioux:

Homeland is No. 1 in poverty. New York Times, 20

September.

King, William S., and Delmo J. Jones. 1974. Papago

Indians: Papago population studies. In American Indian

ethnohistory series: Indians of the Southwest. New York:

Garland Publishing Co., 125–136.

Knepper, Paul, and Michael Puckett. 1995. The historicity

of Tony Hillerman’s Indian police. Journal of the West

(January):12–18.

Krepps, Matthew B. 1992. Can tribes manage their

own resources? The 638 program and American Indian

forestry. In Stephen Cornell and Joseph P. Kalt, eds.

What can tribes do? Strategies and institutions in

American Indian economic development. Los Angeles:

UCLA Press, 179–203.

Krepps, Matthew B., and Richard E. Caves. 1994.

Bureaucrats and Indians: Principal–agent relations and

efficient management of tribal forest resources. Journal

of Economic Behavior and Organization 24:133–151.

LeBeau, Warren. 1998. Juvenile justice detention issues

in Indian Country. Paper presented at the National

Institute of Justice Strategic Planning Meeting on Crime

and Justice Research in Indian Country. Portland,

Oregon, October 14–15.

Lowie, Robert H. 1903. Societies of the Crow, Hidatsa,

and Mandan Indians. In Anthropological papers of the

American Museum of Natural History. Vol. XI, Pt. III.

New York: The Trustees, American Museum of Natural

History.

Luna, Eileen. 1998. The growth and development of 

tribal police: Challenges and issues for tribal sovereignty. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 14

(February):75–86.

Luna, Eileen, and Samuel Walker. 1998. Policing in

Indian Country: A national survey of tribal law enforcement agencies. Washington, D.C.: Police Executive

Research Forum, February.

Major Crimes Act of 1885. 18 U.S.C.A. § 1553.

Meissner, Kevin. 1995. Modern problems of criminal

jurisdiction in Indian Country. American Indian Law

Review 17 (1):175–207.

Melmer, David, and Jean Roach. 1997. Pine Ridge public

safety unworkable. Indian Country Today, February

3–10.
66

Melton, Ada Pecos. 1998. Research on indigenous justice

systems. Paper presented at the National Institute of

Justice Strategic Planning Meeting on Crime and Justice

Research in Indian Country. Portland, Oregon, October

14–15.

———. 1995. Indigenous justice systems and tribal

society. Judicature 79 (3):126–133.

Michaelson, Susan, George Kelling, and Robert

Wasserman. 1988. Toward a working definition of community policing. Working paper #88–05–09, Program in

Criminal Justice Policy and Management, Harvard

University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Moore, Mark H., and Margaret Poethig. 1998. The police

as an agency of municipal government: Implications for

measuring police effectiveness. Paper prepared for the

National Institute of Justice’s Police Research Institute,

“Measuring What Matters.” March.

Mydans, Seth. 1995. Gangs reach a new frontier: Indian

reservations. New York Times, 18 March.

Naranjo, Edwin, Frank Adakai, Brent LaRocque, Warren

LeBeau, and Dwain Holland. 1996. Oglala Sioux Tribe,

Department of Public Safety program review. Albuquerque:

Bureau of Indian Affairs, Division of Law Enforcement

Services, Aberdeen Area Office. October.

Native American Languages Act of 1990. U.S. Public

Law 477. 101st Congress.

Native American Languages Act of 1992. U.S. Public

Law 254. 102d Congress.

Native American Subcommittee, House Interior and

Insular Affairs Committee. 1994. Proceedings from the

oversight hearing on BIA law enforcement. Washington,

D.C.: U.S. House of Representatives. March 18.

Nielsen, Marianne E. 1996. Major issues in Native

American involvement in the criminal justice system.

In Marianne E. Nielsen and Robert A. Silverman, eds.

Native Americans, crime, and justice. Boulder: Westview

Press, 293–303.

O’Brien, Sharon. 1989. American Indian tribal governments. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Odum, Mariam. 1991. Money shortage seen as hindering

Indian justice. New York Times, 4 October.

Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division. 1996.

Criminal justice in Indian Country. Washington, D.C.:

U.S. Department of Justice, September. (Available online

at http://www. usdoj.gov/oig/au9616/9616res.htm.)

Pace, David. 2000. Most Indians haven’t benefitted from

casino boom. Associated Press, http://wire.ap.org,

downloaded September 1, 2000.

Peak, Ken. 1989. Criminal justice, law, and policy in

Indian Country: A historical perspective. Journal of

Criminal Justice 17:485–494.

Perspectives on Policing. 1988–1993. Papers published

jointly by the National Institute of Justice and Harvard

University. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of

Justice.

Pilant, Lois. 1995. Spotlight on planning and designing

police facilities. Police Chief 65 (3)(March):28–36.

Reaves, Brian. 1996. Local police departments, 1993.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of

Justice Statistics, May.

Reaves, Brian A., and Andrew L. Goldberg. 1998.

Census of State and local law enforcement agencies,

1996. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice,

Bureau of Justice Statistics, June.

Reno, Janet. 1995. Department of Justice policy on

Indian sovereignty and government-to-government 

relations with Indian tribes. Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Department of Justice, Office of Tribal Justice. Published

in Federal Register 61 (112)(June 10):29, 424.

Roach, Jean. 1997. Evaluation could lead to changes.

Indian Country Today, February 3–10.

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. 1996. Bridging

the cultural divide: A report on aboriginal people and

criminal justice in Canada. Ottawa, Canada: Canada

Communications Group.

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. 1997. Proceedings

from the summit on Charting the Future of Justice in

Indian Country. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Senate,

October 28.

Silverman, Robert A. 1996. Patterns of Native American

crime. In Marianne Nielsen and Robert A. Silverman,

eds. Native Americans, crime, and justice. Boulder,

Westview Press, 58–74.
67

Skogan, Wesley. 1977. Dimensions of the “dark figure”

of unreported crime. Crime and Delinquency 23

(January):41–50.

Sparrow, Malcolm K. 1988. Implementing community

policing. Perspectives on policing. No. 9. Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, November.

Sparrow, Malcolm K., Mark H. Moore, and David M.

Kennedy. 1990. Beyond 911: A new era for policing.

New York: Basic Books.

Teague, Lynn S. 1993. Prehistory and the traditions of

the O’odham and Hopi. Kiva 58 (4):435–454.

Tribe, U.S. Fish & Wildlife sign historic agreement:

Statement of relationship recognizes tribe as steward of

its ancestral land. 1994. Fort Apache Scout 33(17)

(December 9):1.

Trojanowicz, Robert. 1982. An evaluation of the neighborhood foot patrol program in Flint, Michigan. East

Lansing: Michigan State University.

Underhill, Ruth M. 1969. Papago Indian religion.

Columbia University contributions to anthropology

series. Vol. 33. New York: Columbia University.

———. 1940. The Papago Indians of Arizona and their

relatives, the Pima. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department

of the Interior, Bureau of American Ethnology.

U.S. Congress. 1948. 18 U.S.C.A. § 1151.

U.S. Public Law 280. 83d Congress. 67 Stat. 588 (1953).

Voegelin, Charles F., and Florence M. Voegelin. 1966.

Map of North American Indian languages. New York:

American Ethnological Society.

Wachtel, David. 1982. Indian law enforcement. In

Laurence French, ed. Indians and criminal justice.

Totowa, New Jersey: Allanheld, Osmun Press, 109–120.

———. 1980. An historical look at BIA police on the

reservations. American Indian Journal (May):13–18.

Wald, John. 1995. Apaches and U.S. sign groundbreaking

treaty. John F. Kennedy School of Government Bulletin

(Winter):2–3.

Waldman, Carl. 1985. Atlas of the North American

Indian. New York: Facts on File Publications.

Wasserman, Eidell. 1998. Issues in conducting research

on crime victimization. Paper presented at the National

Institute of Justice Strategic Planning Meeting on Crime

and Justice Research in Indian Country. Portland,

Oregon, October 14–15.

Weisheit, Ralph A., Edward L. Wells, and David N.

Falcone. 1995. Crime and policing in rural and smalltown America: An overview of the issues. Research

Report. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice,

September.

Weyerman, Debra. 1998. And then there were none.

Harper’s, April, 60–70.

Why does violent crime on Indian lands soar 87 percent

as it drops elsewhere? 1997. Crime Prevention News,

September 18, 1–2.

Wilson, James Q., and George L. Kelling. 1982. Broken

windows: The police and neighborhood safety. Atlantic

249 (3)(March):29–38.

Wood, Jennifer. 1998. Law enforcement survey. Paper

presented at the National Institute of Justice Strategic

Planning Meeting on Crime and Justice Research in

Indian Country. Portland, Oregon, October 14–15.

Young, Marlene A. 1995. Restorative community justice:

A call to action. Washington, D.C.: National Organization

for Victim Assistance.
69

Appendix A. Study Methodology

Research for this study included four components:

● A review of relevant literature.

● Brief visits to several Indian police departments

and the Indian Police Academy in Artesia, New

Mexico.

● Intensive site visits to four reservations.

● A two-part survey distributed to Indian police

departments.

Each study component is described below.

Literature Review

Several areas of literature provided background and

context for the primary research. These included

American Indian issues, policing, sociology, and

anthropology. For all areas, both historical and current materials ranging from academic works to local

newspaper articles were found to be relevant.

American Indian topics included history, the history

of policing on Indian reservations, culture, economic development, governance, sovereignty, and materials specific to the four tribes studied in depth.

Policing topics included the history of policing, community policing, rural policing, and the organization

and management of police departments. The sociology review focused on rural sociology. The anthropology review focused largely on Native American

anthropology, but also included some literature

related to social control and the development of

modern legal systems in indigenous societies. The

scope of the literature search is reflected in the references at the end of this report.

Brief Visits to Several Police

Departments

We made brief visits to several tribes and their police

departments to inform our selection of departments

to be studied in depth. These brief visits were also

useful as a means of understanding possible survey

issues. Members of the research team visited 10 tribes

across the Southwest, the Northwest, the East, and

the Northern Plains. The team also visited the Indian

Police Academy in Artesia, New Mexico, to understand the training the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)

provides to police officers.

Indepth Study of Four Police

Departments

We studied four departments and the tribal contexts

in which they operate in depth to gain a richer

understanding of the diverse and complex ways in

which Native communities cope with their policing

challenges. Many aspects of reservation policing

were difficult to understand or even know about

without intensive onsite research. For example, we

used this method to clarify the details of organizational process and structure. Likewise, because it

allows investment in relationships, we expected the

site-visit approach to provide data on community

members’ more closely guarded opinions (such as

their honest perceptions of their police departments).

Data from the four indepth studies are integrated

throughout this report and are at the core of its discussion and analysis.

Like the brief site visits, intensive onsite research

was an important precursor to survey work. Because

information about the practice of policing in Indian

Country is so limited, onsite work helped define

the topics on which broad-based survey data were

needed. Similarly, the substantial variation in justice administration, jurisdictional arrangements,

and socioeconomic conditions that exist in Indian

Country suggests that only some quantitative data

comparisons are meaningful; intensive study helped

focus the survey on those that are.

Our site-selection strategy was to choose Indian

nations that varied on as many relevant dimensions as could be captured in such a small sample.1

The most important dimensions on which we sought
70

significant variation were crime problems and other

policing challenges, culture, economics, geography,

and the management and administrative structure of

the police departments.2

We chose Tohono O’odham and the Gila River

Indian Community (both in Arizona) because they

have similar cultural backgrounds but distinctly different geographical and economic settings. Both are

O’odham nations located in their traditional homelands. We anticipated that, as southwestern tribes

near the Mexican border, they might share some

important regional challenges, including the problems of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

Nonetheless, we expected the overall problems to

vary substantially between the tribes because the

Gila River Indian Community is greatly subject to

the social and economic influence of a major city

(Phoenix) and Tohono O’odham remains more 

isolated, more traditional, and more economically

distressed.

Besides these contrasts, we were interested in comparing the policing challenges and approaches of

tribes in different regions. Early investigation suggested that Indian nations in the Northern Plains

have been generally (although not universally) more

assimilated than tribes in the Southwest and that in

some cases they suffer from more crime—particularly more violent crime—a combination that,

according to some policing professionals, makes

them much more difficult to police.3 Indeed, the

way these factors combine with political dynamics

and influence the administration of some otherwise

interesting police departments caused us to rule out

certain candidates for intensive study. The sustained

involvement in these departments necessary for the

study could not be assured. The sites selected for

indepth study on the Northern Plains were 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).

Finally, one of the most important differences

between tribes is the management structure of

their police departments. While the possibilities

are covered in more detail in chapter 2, an important distinction among many Indian communities is

whether policing services are provided by the BIA

or by the tribe itself. If a tribe opts to manage the

police department itself, it can either self-fund or

contract for funding from the BIA. In the latter case,

money that would have been used by the Federal

Government to provide policing services is passed

on to the tribe.

Our sample of four sites includes important comparisons and contrasts along this management and

funding dimension. At the outset of our study, the

Gila River Indian Community had a BIA-managed

department to which it had added a number of tribally funded officers. By the end of the study period,

it had assumed management responsibility from the

Federal Government using a contract under Public

Law 93–638, which is the most common arrangement for replacing the Federal management of policing services in Indian Country.4 Tohono O’odham

operated under a “638 contract” throughout the period. Similarly, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai

Tribes have operated for many years under a selfgovernance compact (in practical terms, this means

they have greater control over the way the department is funded and structured than do tribes operating under 638 contracts). Finally, the Three Affiliated

Tribes’ police department is BIA-administered (at

the time of this research, the Tribes had no intention

of changing their arrangement). The contrast between

the last two cases may be especially important; some

observers suggested that the departments were

among the best in Indian Country, although they

work under management structures that are ostensibly nearly as different as possible.

We restricted our study to four sites for several reasons. First, we hoped to study both the departments

and the tribal contexts in which they serve. Doing

both well required a fairly small study sample.

Second, in a few cases, it took substantial time

onsite (a few days to approximately 2 weeks of staff

time) to obtain approval to conduct the study. This

time was productive from a research standpoint—

offering much insight into tribal politics and culture during the process—but it was time consuming

and limited the number of communities we could

approach for indepth involvement. Finally, the

increased time spent at each site allowed the formation of relationships, which produced critical information and insight into the way tribes policed.

Clearly, it would be productive to study additional

sites, especially given the diversity of policing

arrangements and social, cultural, and economic

settings in Indian Country.
71

Although we spent considerable unstructured time

at each site, our research was guided by a systematic list of individuals and groups we wished to interview and activities we wished to observe. Interview

prospects included the following:

● Formal and informal tribal political leaders from

both the “national” (central tribal government)

and “subnational” (district or village) levels.

● Representatives of the tribal criminal justice system, especially those from the police department,

correctional system, probation office, judiciary,

prosecutors’ office, and the defense bar.

● Health and social service providers working for

both tribal and Federal agencies.

● Consumers of police and criminal justice services, particularly individuals and families who had

been through the criminal justice system, youth

groups, and residents of high-crime areas.

● Representatives of important historical and cultural practices, such as elders and traditional

healers.

The activities we sought to observe included routine police activities, especially through ride- and

walkalongs with the police; the operation of the

broader criminal justice system (court proceedings,

jail conditions, etc.); and important community

meetings, such as legislative sessions, village or

district meetings, school board meetings, elders’

meetings, youth council or club sessions, and

(where possible and appropriate) cultural activities.

Surveys

Although survey-based research addresses a narrower

range of issues, the payoff compared with indepth

site research is the ability to collect data from a

larger sample of communities. Such data put information from the smaller, intensive study sample into

perspective; they should help both researchers and

tribes understand what is typical and what is not.

To maximize the response rate and stretch our

resources, we worked with Eileen Luna (Assistant

Professor, American Indian Studies) at the University of Arizona (Tucson) in the survey effort. The

University of Arizona mailed the first questionnaire

(part I of the survey) to more than 200 departments

in the continental United States, regardless of size.

This distribution was intended to be comprehensive,

including all departments whose primary responsibility is to police Indian Country.5 Harvard University

mailed the second questionnaire (part II)—which

was longer and more indepth than the first and

included some organizational questions—to 67 large

tribes (but only 66 departments, since two of the large

tribes share a BIA department). These nations are

the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic

Development’s usual study sample, a group for

which the Project possesses substantial background

data. In general, these larger nations set the practice

standard for Indian Country in terms of business

activity, government and administrative function,

and political rights.6 Because of their probable

greater importance, our greater familiarity with

them, and our access to better data about them overall, we made a concentrated effort to increase the

response rate among these tribes. All data that we

report from both questionnaires of the survey refer

to this smaller study sample.

The questionnaires and list of respondents are

included in appendix B. Forty-six of 66 departments

responded to part I of the survey (the University of

Arizona instrument) and 39 to part II (the Harvard

University instrument). Using background data from

the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic

Development, we determined that, in general, the

groups of respondents and nonrespondents are comparable along the following dimensions: average

economic status, communities’ average distance

from large urban areas, and police departments’

usual administrative arrangements (638 contract

versus BIA policing). However, police departments

responding to the survey serve tribes that are somewhat larger (in both population and area), less active

users of their native language, and less involved with

the gaming industry than the nonresponding tribes.

One caution is echoed throughout this report and in

the work of other criminal justice researchers and

practitioners in Indian Country (for example, Elias

1998; Luna 1998; Luna and Walker 1998; Wood 1998).

All but the most basic and easily verified data must

be interpreted carefully; this is most emphatically

true for data collected by telephone or by mail. For

example, multiple inquiries often produced different

answers to the same questions regarding salaries,
72

department budgets and size, and crime statistics.

The reasons are numerous and complex, but the

result is that we hold very loosely to what might be

termed the “statistical” portrait of police departments

in Indian Country offered later in this report, and

we develop a portrait of the typical department that

focuses more on management challenges. Indeed,

there is a growing consensus among researchers and

policymakers on management challenges faced by

Indian police departments, even while there is substantial disagreement on such issues as the budget

resources available and the ratio of law enforcement

officers to citizens.7

Notes

1. In some, but not all, cases our work was facilitated by

existing working relationships with tribes. However, having such a relationship was not a criterion for selection.

2. PL 83–280 provides significant variation along several

of these dimensions. We excluded these different administrative and jurisdictional arrangements from our study,

however, because the impacts of the law—and the reform

options available to tribes whose policing institutions are

subject to it—are important enough to merit a study of

their own.

3. For example, interview with Brent LaRocque,

Criminal Investigator, Bureau of Indian Affairs Division

of Law Enforcement Services, March 1996.

4. The Gila River Indian Community assumed management of its police department on August 10, 1998.

5. There are approximately 330 reservations in the lower

48 United States, but many fewer Indian police departments. This is because some BIA-administered departments serve more than one reservation (particularly

where tribal communities are small) and some tribes are

not eligible to have their own police departments.

6. Using the 1980 Census as a benchmark, the Harvard

Project on American Indian Economic Development sample includes tribes with population 1,000 or greater that

are located in traditional Indian areas of the continental

United States. However, the sample excludes Oklahomabased tribes, both because they lack distinct land bases

(the only reservation per se in Oklahoma belongs to the

Osage) and because the U.S. Bureau of the Census collects data for them in a way that is not comparable to the

way it collects data for other tribes.

7. This was discussed by members of the Indian policing

panel at the National Institute of Justice Research and

Evaluation Conference, Washington, D.C., August 1998.
73

Appendix B. Survey Respondents and

Questionnaires

The chart below provides information on our survey universe and the tribes responding to each part.
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
About the National Institute of Justice

NIJ is the research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Justice and is the only Federal agency solely dedicated

to researching crime control and justice issues. NIJ provides objective, independent, nonpartisan, evidence-based knowledge

and tools to meet the challenges of crime and justice, particularly at the State and local levels. NIJ’s principal authorities are

derived from the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended (42 U.S.C. §§ 3721–3722).

NIJ’s Mission

In partnership with others, NIJ’s mission is to prevent and reduce crime, improve law enforcement and the administration of

justice, and promote public safety. By applying the disciplines of the social and physical sciences, NIJ—

• Researches the nature and impact of crime and delinquency.

• Develops applied technologies, standards, and tools for criminal justice practitioners.

• Evaluates existing programs and responses to crime.

• Tests innovative concepts and program models in the field.

• Assists policymakers, program partners, and justice agencies.

• Disseminates knowledge to many audiences.

NIJ’s Strategic Direction and Program Areas

NIJ is committed to five challenges as part of its strategic plan: 1) rethinking justice and the processes that create just communities; 2) understanding the nexus between social conditions and crime; 3) breaking the cycle of crime by testing researchbased interventions; 4) creating the tools and technologies that meet the needs of practitioners; and 5) expanding horizons

through interdisciplinary and international perspectives. In addressing these strategic challenges, the Institute is involved in the

following program areas: crime control and prevention, drugs and crime, justice systems and offender behavior, violence and

victimization, communications and information technologies, critical incident response, investigative and forensic sciences

(including DNA), less-than-lethal technologies, officer protection, education and training technologies, testing and standards,

technology assistance to law enforcement and corrections agencies, field testing of promising programs, and international crime

control. NIJ communicates its findings through conferences and print and electronic media.

NIJ’s Structure

The NIJ Director is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The NIJ Director establishes the Institute’s objectives, guided by the priorities of the Office of Justice Programs, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the needs of the field. NIJ

actively solicits the views of criminal justice and other professionals and researchers to inform its search for the knowledge and

tools to guide policy and practice.

NIJ has three operating units. The Office of Research and Evaluation manages social science research and evaluation and crime

mapping research. The Office of Science and Technology manages technology research and development, standards development, and technology assistance to State and local law enforcement and corrections agencies. The Office of Development and

Communications manages field tests of model programs, international research, and knowledge dissemination programs. NIJ 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. 

To find out more about the National Institute of Justice, please contact:

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

P.O. Box 6000

Rockville, MD 20849–6000

800–851–3420

e-mail: askncjrs@ncjrs.org

To obtain an electronic version of this document, access the NIJ Web site

(http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij).

If you have questions, call or e-mail NCJRS.