Long Term Plan to Build and Enhance Tribal Justice Systems

Adrea Korthase

Earlier this month the DOI and DOJ released the Long Term Plan to Build and Enhance Tribal Justice Systems. An excerpt:

Central Themes of the Tribal Justice Plan
The following major themes emerged from consultation and public comment:

  • Establishing alternatives to incarceration should be the major focus.
  •  The Tribal Justice Plan should be implemented in consultation and collaboration with Tribal Leaders and should be flexible enough to allow tribes to develop strategies tailored to their specific public safety needs and tribal history and culture.
  • The Tribal Justice Plan should coordinate federal, tribal, state and local government resources to support operations, programming in tribal justice systems, and critical infrastructure issues with tribal correctional facilities, fully mindful of the sovereign status of tribes in these coordination efforts.
  • There should be greater coordination between DOJ and DOI with respect to awards for grants that may be used to construct tribal correctional facilities and multi-purpose justice centers (which may be provided by DOJ) and P.L. 93-638 contracts and self-governance compacts for funding operations (provided only by DOI). The Departments are committed to addressing the issue of coordination to address this and other issues related to detention in Indian country.

Additional links can be found at NCAI.

One thought on “Long Term Plan to Build and Enhance Tribal Justice Systems”

  1. Brent Leonhard August 30, 2011 / 10:43 am

    Funny how they changed the Act’s requirement for a long term plan to address INCARCERATION in Indian country into a long term plan to build and enhance justice systems… And, first and foremost on their list is to find alternatives to incarceration. This administration has done amazing things to address crime in Indian country, but this “plan” is a cop-out. Granted, alternatives to incarceration, when appropriate, are great. But the TLOA’s requirement for a long term plan was to address how to deal with actual incarceration – that is a difficult problem that needs to be addressed and will be even more of a problem with felony sentencing. I guess they decided to kick the problem down the road.

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