Community policing on American Indian reservations: a preliminary investigation

In the 1970s, Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues found that neighborhood policing works better than metropolitan policing. Though Ostrom articulated design principles for self-governance, the early studies of neighborhood policing did not. In this paper, we articulate the design principles for self-governing policing, which we term Ostrom-Compliant Policing. We then apply this framework to an understudied case: policing on American Indian reservations. Policing in Indian country generally falls into one of three categories – federal policing (by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Federal Bureau of Investigation), state policing (by municipal and state police departments), and tribal policing (by tribal police departments) – that vary in the degree of centralization. Our main contribution is to show that tribal policing as it is practiced in the United States, which claims to be self-governing, is not Ostrom-Compliant. Thus, our approach offers insight into why high crime remains an ongoing challenge in much of Indian country even when tribes have primary control over policing outcomes. This does not mean centralization is better, or that self-governance of policing does not work. Rather, our research suggests that a greater tribal autonomy over-policing and meta-political changes to federal rules governing criminal jurisdictions is necessary to implement Ostromian policing.

Segregation and American Indian Reservations

Racial residential segregation is a key feature of the social organization of American society, and is also a fundamental cause of racial inequality. The body of literature on racial residential segregation and its effects on African Americans is expansive, and it is growing for other racial/ethnic groups as well. However, missing from the literature are American Indians. American Indian reservations are prime examples of racial residential segregation. This chapter strives to answer key questions: How is the racial residential segregation of American Indians different from that for other racial/ethnic groups? How can American Indian nations address issues on their reservations that result from segregation? What processes drove the segregation of American Indians onto reservations? American Indian nations are in a unique position to address the effects of racial residential segregation in ways that other racial/ethnic groups cannot. That is because American Indian reservations, despite segregation, are a place of healing.

Standardized incidence ratio of the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study in a Midwestern state

ABSTRACTMotivationThe Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has made a dramatic impact around the world, with some communities facing harsher outcomes than others. We sought to understand how counties in the state of South Dakota (SD) fared compared to expected based on a reference population and what factors contributed to negative outcomes from the pandemic in SD.MethodsThe Standardized Incidence Ratios (SIR) of all counties, using age-adjusted and crude adjusted hospitalization and death rates were computed using the SD age-adjusted rate as a reference population. In addition, a penalized generalized linear regression model was used to identify factors that are associated with COVID-19 hospitalization and death rates. This model was then used to compute a new SIR after controlling for other socio-demographic and -economic factors.ResultsWe identified counties that had more or less severe outcomes than what would be expected based on the rate of SD after age adjustment. Additionally, race, education, and testing rate were some of the significant factors associated with the outcome. The SIR values after controlling for these additional factors showed change in magnitude from the range of 4 times more severe to 1.5 times more severe out-come than what is expected. Interestingly the lower end of this interval did not have a major change.ConclusionThe age adjusted SIR model used in this study allowed for the identification of counties with more or less severe than what is expected based on the state rate. These counties tended to be those with high nonwhite percentage, which mostly included counties with American Indian reservations. Although several predictors are associated with hospitalization and deaths, the penalized model confirmed what is already reported in literature that race and education level have a very high association with the outcome variables. As can be expected the further adjusted SIR mostly changed in those counties with higher than expected outcomes. We believe that these results may provide useful information to improve the implementation of mitigation strategies to curb the damage of this or future pandemics by providing a way for data-driven resource allocation.

Indigenous Self-Governance and Development on American Indian Reservations

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People promotes self-governance as a matter of justice rather than economics. How will self-governance affect the incomes of indigenous people? To gain insight, we compare long-run income growth on American Indian reservations with and without federal oversight through the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Reservations with more autonomy had 12-15 percent higher income per capita in 2016, even conditional on 1930s income. However, these more autonomous reservations also experienced wider income variance with more downside risk. The findings are consistent with theory emphasizing the development trade-offs between local and centralized governance.

Pandemic Protocols, Native Nutrition: Grocery Store Access from American Indian Reservations during COVID-19

Native Americans have 3.5 times the COVID-19 infection rate and 1.5 times the death rate of non-Hispanic Whites. We demonstrate that social distancing policies may have unanticipated effects on behaviors. We estimate the effect of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on the types of grocery stores visited by individuals residing on and off of American Indian reservations during the pandemic. We find that there is a larger reduction in the distance traveled to grocery stores for on-reservation households than for off-reservation households. We also find an increase in the relative share of trips to convenience stores for reservation residents.

Secured Transactions Laws and Economic Development on American Indian Reservations

Harmonized commercial laws are considered an essential ingredient to commerce and trade and have been called the backbone of American commerce. Key components of these laws are those governing secured transactions. In recent years, Native American tribal governments have moved to adopt commercial codes to increase economic development on their reservations, but many have modified these codes to address challenges to tribal sovereignty and culture. This paper compares reservations that adopted modified secured transaction acts to reservations that adopted uniform laws. We demonstrate that reservations can potentially experience substantial economic gains from either form of adoption.