What Are Your Most Serious Law-and-Order problems?
Crime rates were explored through a question designed to elicit respondents’ views about
the most serious law-and-order issues on the reservation. Respondents were asked: In your
experience, what are the most serious law-and-order problems on the reservation? The question
is open ended, and respondents were encouraged to give their judgments based on work or life
experience. The open-ended question seeks somewhat different information than the quantitative
rankings analyzed above. Respondents provided their own lists and defined the problems in their
own way. In the quantitative rankings of 12 crimes, we forced respondents to make judgments
about relative crime frequency and police priorities from a given set of crimes. With the
qualitative question, the respondent is allowed to make whatever ranking and crime
conceptualization that she or he believes makes sense.
The open-ended question seeks to
identify the most serious law-and-order problems, and, therefore, seeks only the most frequent,
or the most serious. It’s not clear that the most serious are the same as the most frequent. Since
only the most serious law-and-order problems are solicited from the respondents, only the high
end of the crime-seriousness spectrum is reported. If we compare with the quantitative rankings
of 12 crimes, then we expect to see the high-frequency crimes mentioned, if we can equate crime
298
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.
frequency with crime seriousness.
We can expect high-frequency crimes will be mentioned and
low-frequency crimes will not be mentioned, if we can assume that the crime-frequency rankings
are similar to the most serious law-and-order problems. If crime frequency and seriousness are
similar, then we can expect that the high-frequency crimes of domestic violence, DUI, and drug
offenses will be mentioned most often, and the low-frequency crimes of auto theft, robbery,
arson, homicide, and rape will be mentioned less often, or not at all.
When answering the questions, most respondents provide a list of crimes or issues that
are the most serious law-and-order problems on their reservation or a reservation within a
county. Respondents provided answers from all three groups —
law enforcement personnel,
reservation residents, and criminal justice personnel — and for both Public Law 280 and nonPublic Law 280 jurisdictions. Most respondents supplied a list of most serious crimes or issues,
and often commented about interrelations among the crimes on the list. Respondents most often
mention alcohol crimes and issues, drug offenses, and domestic violence among their lists for
most serious law-and-order problems. Many respondents remark that alcohol use, drug use, and
drug trafficking lead to other crimes, including domestic violence, juvenile crimes, sexual abuse,
child abuse and neglect, violence, and others. Drug offenses, alcohol abuse, and domestic
violence are seen as the most serious law-and-order problems on reservations. Drug use and
alcohol use lead to other crimes and disturbances, and often lead to criminal actions by tribal
members who otherwise are not prone to criminal activity.
Drug offenses, DUI, and domestic violence were ranked by respondents in the
quantitative ranking, discussed above,
as the most frequently occurring crimes out of 12 listed
crimes. DUI is not mentioned very often in the open-ended questionnaire responses. Many
respondents talk about alcohol use and abuse, and its role in motivating disruptive actions, such
as domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, and violent attacks, as well as DUIs and other
related crimes or infractions. DUIs are one manifestation of alcohol abuse. Drug abuse is seen
in a similar light, as a cause for other crimes, such as violence, domestic violence and abuse,
property theft, and sometimes drug trafficking and manufacture. Drug and alcohol use is seen by
many respondents as a central, if not the most serious, of law-and-order issues, and as the cause
of a variety of other law-and-order issues on Indian reservations. In the quantitative crimefrequency rankings, domestic violence was ranked most frequent, DUIs second most frequent,
and drug offenses ranked the third most frequent crime.
For the qualitative question of most serious law-and-order problems, respondents most
often comment about drug offenses, then alcohol abuse second, and domestic violence a far third.
For all reporting respondents (N=341), there were 730 separate identifications of serious lawand-order problems. Respondents mentioned drug offenses and related crimes 298 times, or
40.8%, of all law-and-order problems mentioned by respondents. Drug offenses include drug
use, drug trafficking, and directly related crimes. Alcohol use is cited by all reporting
respondents 128 times or 17.5% of all law-and-order problems. Alcohol use means use and
abuse of alcohol, but also includes DUIs, bootlegging, and other directly related crimes. DUIs
are mentioned 15 times, or about 2%, of the total most serious law order problems mentioned.
299
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.
Alcohol use is a better measure of serious law-and-order problems than are DUIs. Respondents
cite domestic violence 93 times (12.7%) as a serious law and order issue. The three most
frequent crimes ranked by respondents are similar to the three most serious law-and-order
problems. Drug offenses, alcohol abuse, and domestic violence compose the majority of lawand-order problems cited by respondents totaling 519, or 71.1%, of all mentioned serious lawand-order problems. Many other serious law-and-order problems are mentioned by respondents
but none are as frequently mentioned as drug offenses, alcohol abuse, or domestic violence.
Other mentioned serious crime problems include sex abuse, violence, property theft, poverty,
juvenile issues, gangs,
child abuse, tribal politics, court administration issues, and others.
We can investigate the patterns of most serious law-and-order problems for differences in
jurisdiction and group effects. As shown in Figure 10.10, the data for more often mentioned
serious law-and-order problems can by separated into a 2X3X2 log-linear analysis. For this
analysis, we will use the measures of how often serious law-and-order problems are mentioned
(N=730), and concentrate on the three most often cited problems: drug offenses, alcohol use,
and domestic violence. Each respondent’s mention of a distinct serious law and order problem is
given a single count. The reporting respondents cited 730 distinct serious crimes, from which we
can calculate the percentages for each crime and group of crimes. Does the frequency of drug
offenses, alcohol abuse, and domestic violence maintain a consistent pattern of most serious lawand-order problems across Public Law 280 and non-Public Law 280 jurisdictions and among
groups — reservation residents, law enforcement personnel, and criminal justice personnel?
