Collecting and Analyzing Tribal Data

Researchers who wish to conduct informative and appropriate studies of American Indian and Alaska Native communities face a number of challenges, including the lack of available data.

As part of their evaluation of a comprehensive initiative to improve tribal criminal justice systems — the CIRCLE Project [1] — researchers emphasized local data collection. Based on their experiences, the CIRCLE evaluation team provided the following advice to help future researchers collect and analyze tribal criminal justice data:

• Know the context. Researchers should understand local criminal justice systems and find out where and how to conduct data searches.
• Engage community members in data collection. Local community members can better gather and interpret data than outside researchers.
• Talk to people across the political spectrum, both on and off the reservation. This limits bias when interpreting data.
• Focus data analysis on improving a tribe's criminal justice system. The analysis should not blame individuals or organizations for what is wrong.
• Use relevant literature to analyze and interpret a tribe's criminal justice data. Data that describe what works in other communities — even outside Indian Country — may help a native nation better understand its own situation.
• Examine how crime and safety problems are related to criminal justice system functioning. Evaluators may wish to consider:
  • System operations (e.g., Does the tribe's criminal justice system lack training or equipment? Does a method used to patrol an area work efficiently?)
  • Fiscal resources (e.g., Would more funding for programs or technology help the entire system function better?)
  • Political stability (e.g., Do certain aspects of the tribe's criminal justice system make it vulnerable to opportunism and exploitation?)
  • System design (e.g., Should a tribe focus on community policing or another policing method? What threats does a tribe encounter?)