Lawmakers Respond to Native Deaths, Disappearances.

PositionCRIMINAL JUSTICE - Brief article

Recent news reports have drawn heart-wrenching, overdue attention to cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

The FBI's National Crime Information Center database lists more than 5,700 Native American women as missing as of 2016. And the Urban Indian Health Institute identified 506 cases of missing and murdered American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls across 71 cities in 2018--280 were murder cases, 128 were missing persons cases and 98 had an unknown status.

But those numbers are, as researchers will admit, only estimates. No one knows how big the problem really is because of underreporting of disappearances and poor data collection.

This year, 28 measures in 11 states were introduced to address those issues. Most (18 measures) were introduced by native legislators; six were enacted. Broadly, the bills addressed: creating task forces/increasing awareness; training/working with law enforcement; reporting and data collection; and congressional action.

In Montana...

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