This document reports on a project, presented at the 14th Indian Nations Conference in 2014, with the purpose of improving law enforcement, prosecution, and judicial response to crimes against women in Indian Country; it outlines select findings from interviews with federal, state, and tribal staff.
This document provides an outline of a presentation on studies that had four objectives: improving law enforcement, prosecution, and judicial response to crimes against women in Indian Country; conducting semi-structured face-to-face interviews with agency representatives involved in the response to those crimes; collecting detailed information on federal, state, and tribal responses to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and homicide of AI (American Indian) and AN (Alaskan Native) women living in tribal communities; and documenting policies, practices, training, and outreach efforts. The questions in the interviews covered the topical domains of context, case processing, agency roles and collaboration, interagency communication, incident tracking, staff training, community and victim outreach, and vicarious trauma. Voluntary and confidential interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes and were conducted with 38 federal and tribal staff in non-PL (Public Law) 280 states, and 47 state and tribal staff in PL 280 states. The document outlines select findings from those interviews, divided into non-PL 280 and PL 280 sections, with subsections including interagency collaboration, underreporting of crimes against women in Indian country, declinations, training, vicarious trauma, and resource availability.