Native American Crime Rates

Native Americans and Crime Increase
Native Americans and reservations are topics that most people that live in big cities have little knowledge about. Native Americans and their tribes live in reservations which are located apart of cities. Due to the separation of reservations and cities, Native Americans have not completely assimilated to the mainstream of the American culture. According to McNamara and Burns (2008) Native Americans have a vast array of cultures and a different life styles. There are distinctions between Native American who live on and off reservations, however there are enough similarities to draw conclusion of the status of Native Americans in the United States. One of the few similarities among Native Americans is their …show more content…
However, the real people affected are the victims involved in the crimes committed by Native Americans. As mentioned before, the consumption of alcohol has made Native Americans crime statistics to increase. According to Feldstein, May, and Venner (2010) Native Americans with alcohol dependence have more interactions with the penal system. Nearly 75 percent of the fatal incidents in reservations involved the use of alcohol by the perpetuator of the crime (McNamara & Burns, 2008). The most common victims of the crimes perpetuated by Native Americans are individuals involved in car incidents, women and children. The arrest rate of Native Americans driving under the influence is higher than any other ethnic race. Moreover, alcohol has also improve the percentage of domestic violence, assault, and rape among Native Americans. Women and children that live in reservations are twice more likely than the rest of the women to be victims of this type of …show more content…
Police in reservations continue to be low in number after crime has been increasing through the lapse of time. According to McNamara and Burns (2008) in Native Americans communities, there is only one police officer to 1,000 people. The poor quality of policing on reservation has also contributed to the increase on crime. There are not enough police officers to attend all emergency calls which makes a lot of crime incidents to remain unresolved. Not having enough personnel to attend every call can cause an increase on crime because criminals will believe that police will delay on attending the emergency call. Delays on emergency calls will give extra time to the suspects to escape from the scene. Furthermore, delaying on emergency calls can cause incidents to result in fatalities that could have been prevented with the presence of authority. Improving the police personnel, and providing them with better training can help the crime rate of Native Americans communities to