Paradise for violent white criminals: tribal lands, where RACE-BASED IMMUNITY

[ProgressiveEconomist]

from tribal prosecution since 1864 lets them go scot-free when (as usual) US Attorneys decline Federal Prosecution. Consequently, according to a Justive Department study, more than one-third of all Native American women will be raped sometime during their lifetime. If the rapist is a non-Indian, chances are there will be no punishment. If the rapist is an Indian, tribal courts are authorized to prosecute and mete out punishment. But the maximum penalty a tribal court can impose is a sentence of ONE YEAR!

From http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415167 (a similar story is on the front page of the Wall St Journal today):

"Criminal justice in Native America

Posted: June 07, 2007 by: Troy Eid

...the federal government legally owes a trust responsibility to serve and protect Native American people living on Indian reservations. Former U.S. Sen. Ben Night-horse Campbell talked about honoring the federal trust responsibility in his keynote remarks at Sand Creek. ...

My son, Alex, who learned about the senator and the Sand Creek Massacre in his fourth-grade Colorado history class this year, pointedly asked me what those words mean to a U.S. Attorney. There's nothing like a question from a 10-year-old to make you think. So I tried to explain that unlike other U.S. citizens, Native Americans living on Indian reservations are legally required, by a combination of federal statutes and court decisions, to rely almost entirely on federal law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges for their public safety needs, including the enforcement of all 'major crimes' such as murder and felony assault. Around the time of the Sand Creek Massacre, the tribes were stripped of their traditional powers to handle these crimes. They now must rely largely on the federal government to keep the peace and punish such criminals. A 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision actually prevents sovereign Indian tribal governments from exercising any criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit crimes on Indian reservations....

Today as at the time of the Sand Creek Massacre, the chief law enforcement officer on Colorado's two Indian reservations is the U.S. Attorney, who performs the same role that elected district attorneys do elsewhere in Colorado....

What is the current state of criminal justice in ''Indian country,'' the legal term Congress uses to refer to Indian tribal and other trust lands where just shy of half of all Americans Indians live? The U.S. Department of Justice reports ... that more than one-third of all Native American women will be raped at least once during their lifetimes. And nearly two-thirds will be victims of violent assaults. Decades of direct experience on and off Indian reservations show that intensifying law enforcement in troubled communities can decrease crime. Yet again, according to Justice Department data, Indian country is served by only half as many police officers as similarly situated rural communities.

Just last year, the federal agency charged by Congress with providing policing to Indian country - the BIA of the U.S. Department of the Interior - hired an internal consultant to determine how to close this gap. The BIA's consultant found that to achieve parity with comparable rural jurisdictions, about 2,000 more police officers would need to be provided to America's Indian reservations. Yet the entire BIA Office of Justice Services staff - including police, correctional officers, prosecutors and staff - currently has only about 450 employees on its payroll. ..."