US Adds Prosecutors to Fight Tribal Crime

[The Straight Story]

US Adds Prosecutors to Fight Tribal Crime

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona (AP) — Marwin Smith has no good way of knowing whether criminals on a South Dakota Sioux Indian reservation are repeat offenders, whether they might have a history of domestic abuse or other violence.

As the attorney general for the Oglala Sioux, he estimates the 44 tribal officers on the Pine Ridge Reservation make about 22,000 arrests each year, with gangs being a signficant part of that number.

The tribe has neither enough prosecutors nor court staff to take on its huge backlog of cases, Smith said, and its antiquated paper records system often makes it difficult to keep track of individual criminal histories.

But signficant help could be on the way.

The U.S. Department of Justice is dispatching 30 new prosecutors to jurisdictions that serve Indian Country. The new hires represent the department's first specific increase in Indian Country prosecutors in almost a decade, and they will target violent crime.

http://www.reznetnews.org/article/us-adds-prosecutors-fight-tribal-crime-45150