Disproportionately Punished, Yet Still Neglected: Variation in Official Police Responses to American Indian/Alaska Native Offending and Victimization

• Author: Brendan Lantz,Cole Ward
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221120691
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Disproportionately

Punished, Yet Still

Neglected: Variation

in Off‌icial Police

Responses to

American Indian/

Alaska Native

Offending and

Victimization

Brendan Lantz and Cole Ward

Abstract

Objectives: While a great deal of research has considered racial disparities

in the criminal justice system, empirical research on the American

Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) population is still in its infancy. Instead,

AIAN people are most often grouped in the “other race”category. In

this research, we move beyond this categorization and advance research

by considering differential handling of AIAN-involved violent crime.

Methods: We use 2016 NIBRS data—including information on 5,740

AIAN victims and 6,591 AIAN suspects—to examine variation in the

College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Corresponding Author:

Brendan Lantz, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University,

Tallahassee, USA.

Email: blantz@fsu.edu

Thematic Issue: Centering Race in the Study of Crime and Criminal Justice

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2023, Vol. 60(1) 79–111

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278221120691

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likelihood of clearance by arrest and variation in these patterns accord-

ing to victim race, offender race, and offense type. Results: Results indi-

cate that incidents involving AIAN suspects and White victims are

especially likely to result in arrest, but incidents involving AIAN suspects

and AIAN victims are less likely to result in arrest. AIAN sexual assault

victimization is particularly unlikely to result in arrest. Conclusions: The

AIAN population is both disproportionately arrested when suspected

of crime, and disproportionately neglected when victimized. If we

wish to better understand the role of race in the criminal justice, it is

imperative that we move beyond simple Black-White dichotomies, and

begin centering attention on other marginalized populations, including

the AIAN population, as well.

Keywords

race/ethnicity, victimization, American Indian/Alaska native, arrest, racial

disparities

A signif‌icant body of research in the f‌ield of criminology and criminal

justice has examined racial differences and disparities in treatment by the

criminal justice system. The majority of this research has examined

Black-White differences (e.g., Kochel, Wilson, and Mastrofski 2011;

Lantz and Wenger 2020), while a smaller amount of this research has exam-

ined disparities for other racial/ethnic groups, like the Hispanic population

(e.g., Golub, Johnson, and Dunlap 2007; Lee 2007; Ulmer and Bradley

2019). Most frequently, this practice leads to the aggregation of individuals

from other racial groups—which may also have complex interactions with

the criminal justice system—into an “other race”category, thus obfuscating

our understanding of both those individual groups and race in the criminal

justice system as a whole.

These tendencies are evidenced, in particular, by the relative neglect of

quantitative analysis of the American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) popula-

tion, a group which is among the most marginalized in America, both his-

torically and contemporaneously. Put simply, very few quantitative

studies have examined disparities in criminal justice system treatment for

either those AIAN people who are victimized, or those AIAN people who

are suspected of committing offenses. Instead, when AIAN people are

included in empirical studies examining criminal justice disparities, they

are frequently grouped in with other racial minorities and not examined in

a focused way. As a result, research on other racial groups has far outpaced

80 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(1)

research on the AIAN population. Moreover, of those limited studies that

have been conducted, many are several decades old, examine only sentenc-

ing decisions, or have focused exclusively on criminal justice on tribal lands,

in what might be called “Indian country”(e.g., Perry 2006, 2009; Ulmer and

Bradley 2019). Yet, while these studies were crucial in advancing the f‌ield,

according to recent census estimates, approximately 78% of the AIAN pop-

ulation currently living in the United States do not actually reside in tribal

statistical areas (Norris, Vines, and Hoeffel 2012), and policing and other

punishment is qualitatively different inside and outside such lands (Perry

2009; Ulmer and Bradley 2018). Addressing this lack of research on the

treatment of this population by the criminal justice system in non-tribal

areas is thus of critical importance.

Put simply, we cannot begin to fully understand racial disparities in the

criminal justice system if we do not move beyond the Black-White dichot-

omy and begin to center the conversation surrounding race in the criminal

justice system around other marginalized and disenfranchised populations,

like the AIAN population, as well (Cunneen and Tauri 2016; Ulmer and

Bradley 2018, 2019).

1

In this regard, some limited, primarily qualitative,

research on the subject (e.g., Perry 2006, 2009) has suggested the potential

for both over-policing (i.e., disproportionate attention) in response to AIAN

offending, and under-policing (i.e., disproportionate inattention) in response

to AIAN victimization, especially for certain offenses, most notably sexual

assault (Bachman et al. 2010). Other research, drawing from conf‌lict theory

more generally, has suggested similar variation according to victim/offender

race combinations, wherein offending that violates racialized social hierar-

chies is likely to be disproportionally punished, while other offending—

including that committed by racial minorities—is likely to be neglected

when it does not violate these hierarchies (e.g., intra-racial violence) (e.g.,

Liska and Chamlin 1984). Yet, these patterns have not been systematically

examined in a quantitative framework among the AIAN population.

Following this, the primary research goal of the current study is to quan-

titatively examine patterns of over- and under-policing among the AIAN

population. To do so, we leverage information on crime clearance by

arrest in the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to

provide a unique window into policing practices among the AIAN commu-

nity (see Brunson and Wade 2019; Cook 1979). Specif‌ically, we examine

disparities in case clearance for (a) AIAN victims, relative to other

victims; and (b) alleged AIAN offenders, relative to other alleged offenders.

We also consider the joint inf‌luence of victim and offender race, by compar-

ing case clearance for those incidents involving both AIAN victims and

Lantz and Ward 81