What Have We Learned From Evaluations of Tribal Courts?

To date, no systematic evaluations of tribal courts have been completed. However, important lessons can be learned from work on tribal Healing to Wellness Courts, as well as evaluations of tribal violence reduction initiatives. Below are some of the implications of these for both the implementation and evaluation of tribal court programs.

Program planners and evaluators must take into account the importance of tribal culture and traditions.

Tribal culture and traditions are critically important to most, if not all, Indian tribes. This must be remembered in planning, implementing, and evaluating any Indian Country initiatives, including tribal court programs. Traditional Indian concepts of justice, restitution, and compensation are very different from those concepts as perceived by the non-Indian population in the United States. As a result, policies and procedures established in other contexts do not necessarily translate to tribal initiatives. Unique barriers can arise when trying to superimpose concepts such as community policing on tribal police agencies, or when applying procedures developed for drug courts or reentry courts directly to tribal judicial systems. Moreover, very little is known about how to assess the effectiveness of traditional remedies and sanctions, such as the utilization of elders and banishment.

Lessons learned from state and local implementation of criminal justice initiatives may not easily translate to tribal settings.

Processes for developing and implementing initiatives that seem to work well for local practitioners cannot simply be adopted "as is" by tribal justice systems. Since tribal customs and values are unique, models developed in non-tribal settings must be modified so that they are consistent with tribal expectations, values, beliefs, customs, and practices. Evaluators and program planners must be sensitive to these differences in attempting to apply "best practices" to tribal initiatives, including tribal courts.

Tribal courts must often deal with the lack of cooperation on the part of non-tribal entities.

State court judges usually have no difficulty in getting cooperation from law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and other courts when they seek to implement new initiatives in their jurisdictions. Tribal court judges often have to deal with organizations and entities over which they have no control, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Attorney's Office. Compliance with tribal court orders, such as protection orders or court-mandated treatment, becomes a complex affair when multiple jurisdictions are involved. Tribal courts cannot incarcerate a non-native for violating a protection order, for example, and may have a difficult time getting state courts to recognize the orders and getting local police agencies to enforce them. These issues can affect the ability to successfully implement new initiatives in tribal courts, and evaluators must take these issues into consideration when assessing such initiatives.

The lack of readily available data on tribal justice makes evaluating tribal initiatives problematic.

Few tribes have automated data systems for collecting and reporting crime and sentencing data, or for tracking offenders. Many of the data requirements of process and outcome evaluations become particularly challenging for tribal courts, which are often so understaffed that they may not be able to participate in manual data collection efforts. Moreover, data will also likely be unavailable for a comprehensive assessment process that would establish the need for specific tribal court initiatives or components (for example, data on specific charges, case processing time and other workload measures, dispositions, and other factors particular to the needs and interests of tribal court judges). Original data collection efforts may be met with distrust on the part of tribal councils, tribal court judges, and members. This lack of data makes the process of establishing meaningful goals and objectives for tribal initiatives a particular challenge.

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