Tribal Policing: Asserting Sovereignty, Seeking Justice.TRIBAL POLICING: ASSERTING SOVEREIGNTY, SEEKING JUSTICE By Eileen Luna-Firebaugh University of Arizona (body, education) University of Arizona - The University was founded in 1885 as a Land Grant institution with a three-fold mission of teaching, research and public service. Press, 149 pages BETWEEN 1995 AND 2000, the number of tribal police departments in Indian Country Indian country or Indian Country n. 1. Indian Territory. 2. Federal reservation lands under Native American tribal jurisdiction. increased by 67 percent. In the wake of this, Eileen Luna-Fire-baugh, an associate professor of American Indian American Indian or Native American or Amerindian or indigenous American Any member of the various aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of the Eskimos (Inuit) and the Aleuts. law and policy at the University of Arizona, has written an accessible portrait of tribal policing in Indian Country. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Today, about 170 American Indian tribes have police departments. Luna-Firebaugh both surveyed and individually interviewed officers and found that there are five different types of law enforcement agencies A law enforcement agency (LEA) is a term used to describe any agency which enforces the law. This may be a local or state police, federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). in Indian Country ranging from those that are funded by federal legislation to those suppported directly by the tribes. She makes a case for why the history of tribal policing is that of the ongoing tensions over sovereignty However, she stumbles when asserting that the growth of tribal police departments is a means for tribes to assert their sovereignty. Surely there are better ways to do that, and in the end, her goals are too lofty for such a short book. The examples of policing and court cases fall short in description and depth. She contends that imprisonment Imprisonment See also Isolation. Alcatraz Island former federal maximum security penitentiary, near San Francisco; “escapeproof.” [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 218] Altmark, the German prison ship in World War II. [Br. Hist. is not the best solution for tribal communities but then proposes building additional corrections facilities as a solution to overcrowding overcrowding overcrowding of animal accommodation. Many countries now publish codes of practice which define what the appropriate volumetric allowances should be for each species of animal when they are housed indoors. Breaches of these codes is overcrowding. in tribal and non-tribal jails. Even though depression, poverty, alcoholism and unemployment are identified as social issues that have serious implications on tribal policing, they are not explored alongside the proposed solutions throughout the book. Sadly, Tribal Policing desperately needs the social context which it fails to deliver. |
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