Native American Crime in the Northwest: 2004-2008 - BIA Information from Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington

• NCJ Number: 227727
• Author(s): Gary R. Leonardson Ph.D.
• Date Published: July 2009
• Length: 203 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2007-BJ-CX-K020
• Agencies: BJS-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Statistics

Annotation

This report presents data on criminal offenses committed by Native Americans for at least one of the years from 2004-2008 as reported by 43 of the 47 tribal agencies covering Alaska (16 percent Native American); Washington (1.7 percent Native American); Idaho ( 1.4 percent Native American); Oregon (1.4 percent Native American); Montana (6.5 percent Native American); and Wyoming (2.4 percent Native American).

Abstract

The first section of the report presents the overall results, and the second section provides information for each of the six States. The third section presents information by tribe or special law enforcement agency. Information for all three sections is presented as general results, which shows the information that was collected and sent for this report. The report draws few comparisons because of the varying years the information was reported, as well as the potential for the use of different data-collection procedures from year to year. Data are also provided on clearance rates, which show that the tribal agencies furnishing information for this report had very high clearance rates for the offenses committed, with 60.7 percent of all crimes cleared in 2004, 87.6 percent cleared in 2005, 42.4 percent in 2006, 55.9 percent in 2007, and 61.4 percent in 2008. The overall rate for the 5 years was 58 percent. For all of the offenses reported for 2004-2008, alcohol was involved in approximately one-third of the offenses. The most commonly reported offenses were drunkenness, disorderly conduct, liquor-law violations, drunk driving, suspicious persons report, assault, and domestic violence. The index crime rates for the combined tribal groups were 2,933 for 2004; 3,182 for 2005; 3,413 for 2006; 3,443 for 2007; and 2,472 for 2008. These rates were relatively low when compared with the overall crime rates for the United States for these years. 19 tables