Not much has changed when it comes to crime in Indian Country, The New York Times reports.
Reservations suffer from the highest crime rates in the nation. And American Indian and Alaska Native women continue to victimized at rates far higher than women of any other racial or ethnic group.
Despite the high rates, most cases go unpunished. According to the
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, federal prosecutors declined to file charges in 52 percent of crime cases in 2011.
That's about the same declination rate that the
Government Accountability Office found when it looked at cases between 2005 and 2009. So the data shows not much has improved despite the passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act and the implementation of other federal initiatives aimed at crime in Indian Country.
“If I had the rates of crime in my community that they do, I’d be mad, too,” Brendan Johnson, the
U.S. Attorney for South Dakota, told the paper.
Get the Story:
Higher Crime, Fewer Charges on Indian Land
(The New York Times 2/21)
GAO Report "U.S. Department of Justice Declinations of Indian Country Criminal
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