| Sumario: | The findings of the 1999 and 2004 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) studies about crime and victimization in the American Indian community deviate from the experience and expectations of South Dakota's current attorney general. The BJS studies focused on the 10-year period from 1992 to 2002 and found that non-Indians had committed 66 percent of all crimes against American Indian victims. The experience of prosecutors in and around Indian country in South Dakota was inconsistent with the BJS findings. Furthermore, the BJS reports deviate in significant ways from academic literature describing violent crime victimization within and outside Indian country. Combined, these concerns produced an overall sense that something was wrong in the findings of the BJS studies that necessitated further investigation. A detailed study of the state of South Dakota's criminal justice system, which contradicted the BJS studies' findings, found that the BJS had ignored federal case data in their research.
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