Funding Data A 1996 study conducted for the Advisory Council on California Indian Policy2 found that California tribes received significan...
Funding Data A 1996 study conducted for the Advisory Council on California Indian Policy2 found that California tribes received significantly less funding for law enforcement and tribal courts than other tribes, and that one of the reasons government officials gave for this disparity was the existence of state jurisdiction under Public Law 280. Thus, one of our research questions was whether tribes subject to state jurisdiction under Public Law 280 receive lower levels of funding for law enforcement and criminal justice under programs sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior or the U.S. Department of Justice.
We secured funding data for the years 1995-2001, and calculated BIA and DOJ funding per person for the five mandatory Public Law 280 states of California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Within each of these states, we also compared the tribes subject to state jurisdiction under Public Law 280 with the tribes, if any, that had been excluded or retroceded. Plan of Analysis Through the analysis provided in the remainder of this Report, we present the first systematic look at law enforcement and criminal justice under Public Law 280, as well as 48 2 Carole Goldberg & Duane Champagne, “A Second Century of Dishonor: Federal Inequities and California Tribes” (Report prepared for the Advisory Council on California Indian Policy, 1996), available at http://www.aisc.ucla.edu/ca/Tribes/htm (last visited August 18, 2007). This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. a comparison with select non-Public Law 280 tribes.
In the chapters to follow, we will employ the interview and other data to examine the following: · understanding of Public Law 280 · availability of law enforcement · quality of law enforcement · quality of criminal justice · court fairness · community, crime, and law enforcement priorities · retrocession · funding · cooperative agreements · sovereignty, government resources and capabilities, and community control over law enforcement These more detailed examinations will weave together interview responses, quantitative data, case studies, and other sources of information about the particular topic. Study Limitations Since the sample design focused on making comparisons among seven significant characteristics of Public Law 280 communities (see Figure 3.1), the selection of communities is not based on a random sample. Sample communities were selected to ensure a range of features such as region and whether the communities were in Public Law 280 jurisdictions under mandatory, optional, excluded, straggler, or retroceded status. The cases are selected and matched to ensure comparisons and inclusion of each of the different types of Public Law 280 conditions. Non-Public Law 280 comparison communities were selected as retroceded communities, stragglers, or never were under Public Law 280 jurisdiction. Within each of the main selection categories, we matched and selected communities meeting several other criteria as outlined in Figure 3.1. In the end, 17 communities were selected and studied based on matching communities according to how well they conformed to the matching criteria set out above. The selection process does not result in a random sample; therefore, the following analysis does not use classic parametric statistics for analysis of scale data and for analysis of quantitative patterns found in the qualitative interviews. The statistical analyses that follow will rely on nonparametric statistical techniques that are more appropriate to proportional, categorical, and scale data. Furthermore, since the 17 case sites do not represent a random sample of the national sample of Public Law 280 and non-Public Law 280 jurisdictions, the results generated by the study are not generalizable to the entire population of American Indian communities. The findings are valid only for the population of communities taking part 49 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice.
This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. in the study. All conclusions in the study are generalized to the 17 participant communities; there is no basis for generalization to the entire population of American Indian communities. The results of this study must be qualified by the limited sample. Nevertheless, the present study includes a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of the administration of criminal justice in 17 American Indian communities, including interviews of reservation residents, law enforcement and criminal justice personnel. So far there is little or no work in the literature to date that is as comprehensive as the present research effort. The results will establish many base line relations and results for the 17 sampled communities, thereby giving researchers and policy makers considerable new information, pointing toward further research possibilities and informing policymaking discussions.
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