Violence Hits American Indians at Highest Rate Among Ethnic Groups By William Claiborne Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 15, 1999; Page A02 American Indians are victims of violent crimes at more than twice the rate of all U.S. residents and in nearly three-quarters of the cases their assailants are not Indian, according to a study released yesterday by the Justice Department. In its first comprehensive analysis of Indians and crime, the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that from 1992 through 1996 the average annual rate of violent victimizations among Indians 12 years and older was 124 per 1,000 residents, compared with 61 for blacks, 49 for whites and 29 for Asians. There are about 2.3 million Native Americans in the United States, just under 1 percent of the population. Among instances of violence against Indians, 60 percent of the offenders were white, 10 percent were black and 30 percent were described in crime reports as "other" but were likely to have been other Native Americans, the report said. The high rate of white offenders is partly attributable to the fact that half or more of the residents on many tribal trust lands are white. "The findings reveal a disturbing picture of American Indian involvement in crimes as victims and offenders. Both male and female American Indians experience violent crime at higher rates than people of other races and are more likely to experience interracial violence," said Jan Chaiken, director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The news was no surprise to Theodore R. Quasula, chief of the law enforcement division of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Quasula has long pleaded for more federal funds to beef up understaffed and poorly equipped police forces on reservations. "I hate to say 'I told you so,' " Quasula said in a telephone interview from his office in Albuquerque. "The rate would probably be even higher if we had computerized crime reporting in Indian country." The FBI's Uniform Crime Report shows that while there are 2.9 police officers per 1,000 citizens in non-Indian communities with populations of less than 10,000, on Indian reservations there are 1.3 officers per 1,000 citizens. There are 1,600 BIA police and uniformed tribal officers patrolling 56 million acres of Indian lands in the lower 48 states, protecting more than 1.4 million residents. By contrast, 3,600 police officers serve the 540,000 residents of the District. For the current fiscal year, Congress added $20 million to the BIA's $82 million law enforcement budget. But Quasula said $500 million would be needed to bring patrolling and detention facilities on reservations to an acceptable level. "It's a good start, but we've got quite a way to go," he said. The Justice report said that 150 American Indians are murdered each year, which is close to the per capita rate in the general population. But the study found that Indians were two to three times more likely to become victims in each of the categories of sexual assaults, robberies, aggravated assaults and simple assaults than whites and blacks. In each category Indians were two to seven times as likely to be victims as Asians. In cases of rape or sexual assault against Indians, 82 percent of the offenders were white, 6 percent black and 12 percent "other," most likely meaning Indian. Two-thirds or more of the American Indian victims of robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault described the offender as belonging to a different race. The study found the arrest rate for alcohol-related nonviolent offenses among American Indians—such as drunk driving, liquor law violations and public drunkenness— was more than double that for the total population during 1996. The Indians' rate of confinement in local jails was estimated to be nearly four times the national average, and almost four in 10 Indians held in local jails had been charged with a public order offense, most commonly driving while intoxicated. © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
