NCJ Number
165710
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 25 Issue: 2 Dated: (1996) Pages: 133-152
Date Published
1996
Length
20 pages
Annotation
The emergence of official categories of juvenile delinquency and the development of a formal system for the legal processing of youth on an American Indian community in the western United States.
Abstract
The community had 9,101 residents in 1990; 41 percent were under age 18. Study data were collected by means of historical/comparative analysis, case reviews of 152 youths detained from January through December 1990, interviews conducted in 1992, and participant observation. The analysis focuses on the creation of the legal code, the Children's Court, and the Juvenile Detention Center and the ongoing activities of these agencies in the context of the larger social system of the reservation and the history of Federal policies toward American Indian Peoples. Results revealed that the rhetoric surrounding the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 differed from the reality. As a result, this community and other Indian communities are governed by law and political structures resembling those of the states in which they are located. The legal processing of youth demonstrates that the implications of these systems include the pervasive surveillance and incarceration of Indian youth who face the double burden of their status as dependent wards of the Federally sponsored tribal government and the United States. Tables and reference notes