Tribal Strategies Against Violence: Cross-Site Evaluation Report, Executive Summary

The TSAV initiative was designed to empower American Indian Tribes to improve the quality of life in their communities by fostering strategic planning to identify community problems and to implement locally developed partnerships for addressing those problems. The goals were to improve the community’s capability to address issues of crime, violence, and drug demand reduction; promote community-based program development involving the active participation of community groups; and develop a culturally sensitive program model for other Native American communities. The participating Tribes fulfilled the program requirements for crime and violence reduction strategies to varying degrees. The strategies fell into five categories: amending Tribal Legal Codes, providing Violence Awareness and Prevention Programs for youth, instituting Alcohol/Substance Abuse Prevention and Supportive Services for youth, strengthening families and enhancing services for adults, and community policing. Factors affecting the implementation of these strategies include the role of the program manager, the placement of the program, the engagement of key stakeholders, and the existence of a tribal court system. As a result of the initiative, there were several important transformations. Tribes developed new services for dealing specifically with youthful offenders. The Tribes focused on partnering with tribal programs and entities and reaching out to non-tribal entities. TSAV efforts led to improved law enforcement operations in the participating tribal communities. The majority of TSAV partners viewed the absence of focus on more systemic concerns in Indian country as a shortcoming. The more successful a Tribe was in bringing together critical tribal criminal justice entities as partners, the more successful it was in addressing a broad range of crime and violence issues. There was an ongoing difference of opinion between administrators and local TSAV partners with respect to which problems were the most appropriate to address and which strategies should be employed to address those problems. The TSAV model primarily allowed for incorporation of cultural considerations only at the short-term activity level. It fell short in cultural relevancy and appropriateness.