 The Office for Victims of Crime is committed to enhancing the nation's capacity to assist crime victims and to providing leadership in changing attitudes, policies and practices to promote justice and healing for all victims of crime. Points of view expressed in this video do not represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice. In an unprecedented action, John Gillis, the Director of the Office for Victims of Crime, traveled around the United States to meet with crime victims first hand to discuss their experiences with the criminal justice system. A series of roundtable meetings were held in nine states, with 30 states represented and over 300 participants. After careful analysis of the informative and heartfelt opinions expressed, there were certain areas of consistency that emerged. The issues focused on both the problems that exist in the criminal justice system and the needed remedies from the perspective of crime victims. This program series captures and reflects some of the key findings of the roundtable discussions. The series includes a total of five thematic videos on topics ranging from the financial impact of crime on victims, to victim notification and basic case information. The opinions expressed are emblematic of many of the participants and is a way in which the Office for Victims of Crime has given a voice to victims. So the one way that I feel that we need to find out how we help you is by going out and meeting with people outside the Beltway, going out and talking with crime victims, meeting the individuals at the grassroots level who are doing the work and who are doing it for the right reasons, not because they're being paid but because they care about what they're doing. So I want to use this as an opportunity to find out from you how we can best help you at the grassroots level, how we can best do some of the things that will help you get through the tragedies that you've all suffered. The rate of violent victimization of American Indians is twice that of the rest of the nation. American Indian reservations are located in some of the most remote areas of the country. Investigations often must travel hundreds of miles to receive adequate services. The jurisdictional complexities of Indian country often impede the investigation and prosecution of violent crime. Police training is extremely important. Judge training is important. Codes are important so that we have elements of a crime that are clear and concise and can be easily proven. Investigators responding to scenes and interviewing and things like that are extremely necessary. And in Indian country, we have a limitation in our jurisdiction in terms of sentencing. We are limited to maximum penalty for any one crime. I don't care how violent it is. The worst that a judge can give to a criminal defendant for the worst violence they can commit is one year in jail and a $5,000 fine, one or the other or both. I mean right then and there, sure, someone's going to say to the judge, but judge, what do you mean you gave him a year? He deserves 10 years. He deserves to be banished. The hardest thing for me in my whole life was to find my son dead. No mother should ever have to go through this. No mother. I don't care who she is. She should not have to lose her child. And I went down to the police department at Laguna practically every day and I bugged them and I tested them. And I said, I want to know. They didn't tell me who they had arrested or if they were going to arrest. If they were investigating, nobody told me anything. We don't have a domestic violence code in our Pueblo. When we do have domestic violence, sometimes they're charged with this orderly conduct or assault or battery, which isn't much. And it's frustrating. We are not allowed to put our perpetrators in jail. It costs us $50 a day to have them in jail and it comes out of our money. So our council feels, don't put them in jail. We don't have the funding to punish them, which is frustrating and it's frustrating for our victims. They feel they're not getting any kind of justice then. Therefore, a lot of my victims are turning away. A lot of them are coming back into the office and telling me I don't want to press charges. I want to dismiss it. The process is too long. Nobody's here to help. And even if we do go to court, they don't go to jail anyway. If there's some way to do mandatory training for state agencies who deal with Indian Country, who border Indian Country, that's something that we need, the law enforcement officers need. Well, I mean, we have a lot of issues, not just domestic violence, not just violence, but issues in itself that our laws are and our rights, they are being pushed aside. Like I said, we really need to have somebody come to our people, come and find out what's going on and let a majority of us know what rights we actually have. And then finally, they made an arrest. But they couldn't tell me anything. Now I realize that if they tell you anything, they may jeopardize their investigation. Now I know that. But they should at least tell the people, you know, we can't tell you anything because we may jeopardize what we're doing. If we do get a chance to get our cases forward to federal court, it takes a long time to get it there. So it's not unusual for us to have a case for two years before it would reach federal court. You know, in the state system, it doesn't take that long. You know, nobody waits for two years. But in Indian country, that's probably common. We have our traditional ceremonies that help us to heal our spirit and our soul. And when you put that down in writing and you put it down on paper, how do you explain to somebody in D.C. a wiping down ceremony? And how that dollar is spent to help this person? Because part of the wiping down ceremony includes food and getting wood for a sweat, a nipi. And so if we could have a little bit of some open-mindedness and acceptance and maybe some tolerance to our traditional ceremonies. It's just this last time, you know, they asked me, well, you'll need to have the traditional healer write up a resume. You'll need to include their certifications and where they were taught and all this kind of stuff. And I said, well, it doesn't happen like that, you know. And but is there, I'm sure that other tribes have asked for money in their grants, you know, to be able to provide something to traditional healers because, you know, we pay therapists and we pay them dearly, you know, for working with our clients. And but you can't get any of them to come out there on a volunteer basis and donate their gas money and donate their time, you know, for working with our clients. And we shouldn't expect our traditional Indian healers to pay money for gas out of their own pocket and to travel many miles, you know, to perform this for our clients. When sexual assaults happen and we have our SART team set up for our interviews, what will happen is a lot of times if our victim only speaks upic, the interview is conducted in like sort of half upic, half English. And what we experience is that we don't have the interpreter on site right away for these times. And you have a lot of times the state troopers will conduct our interview. And then they won't be able to ask the questions because they don't know what the answers have been. So they will have asked questions, they'll get answers, and then we'll have to show the tape. So probably funding for either interpreters to be on the scene that can do sort of as we're, you know, live interpretation, or to start to train and try to get better establishment for state troopers of upic speaking and other dialects that we would have around Alaska. Justice for Indian people across the country is part of the unfinished business. And how to put the voices and the hearts together of what are the healing opportunities for us to heal in our own way. And I think that's what's the beauty of this conversation that you have. And I think it's time for Indian people to turn to each other, not on each other. It's not people who are, for the most part, non-Indians perpetrating crimes on us. Sometimes it's our own people on our own people. I do thank you for taking the time to spend with us today. I wish you didn't have to do it. I wish we were here under different circumstances because none of us chose to have a tragedy happen in our lives. But now that it has happened, let's see that we can see if we can take advantage of that and try and help others who have to follow so that they don't have to suffer the same pain that we've suffered. So thank you. The following is a summary of the key points made during this program. Changes in tribal codes are necessary to address sentencing options and perpetrator confinement issues. Training is necessary for tribal, federal, and state law enforcement personnel on effective responses to crime victims in Indian country. Dissemination of information about victims' rights in Indian country is needed. Address jurisdictional issues that impact trial delays for cases perpetrated in Indian country and prosecuted in the federal criminal justice system. Improve communication between criminal justice professionals and crime victims in Indian country. Improve sensitivity to traditional cultural practices as they pertain to funding decisions by government agency representatives. Recognize that language barriers impact effective communications with crime victims and provide funding for interpreter services in Indian country. Acknowledge the prevalence of Indian on Indian crime and identify opportunities for healing and direct action through dialogue. The Office for Victims of Crime Administers funding authorized under the Children's Justice and Assistance Act to support efforts to improve the investigation and prosecution of child abuse in Indian country. Funding has been used to develop children's legal codes to establish infrastructure within tribal communities and increase knowledge and skills of local tribal staffs to develop culturally relevant and appropriate child welfare policies and laws. The Office for Victims of Crime is supporting collaborations between American Indian and Alaska native crime victim organizations and state agency representatives. This collaboration is intended to assist representatives of crime victim organizations in Indian country to understand requirements for the receipt of government funding. The Office for Victims of Crime funded the faith-based counseling for crime victims in Indian country discretionary grant program that encourages collaboration among victim service programs, traditional healers, and other faith-based clergy as well as the use of traditional healing services as a resource for crime victims in Indian country. Cultural sensitivity is increasingly a part of the training and technical assistance offered for advocates and allied professionals. OVC is supporting an American Indian and Alaska native victim assistance academy to address issues that have a special impact in Indian country. Recognizing that geographic isolation presents challenges in making services available to American Indian crime victims, the Office for Victims of Crime funded the forensic telemedicine equipment and training program to help Indian health service clinics and service units develop and transmit photographs of injuries sustained by child victims to other medical facilities. OVC recognizes the potential of the application of this technology to other types of crimes, including domestic violence and sexual assault. The Office for Victims of Crime is funding the Tribal Victim Assistance Program to provide advocacy and court accompaniment to help crime victims in Indian country understand the justice process and keep them informed about the developments that affect their cases. Helping victims to feel more confident that they are being treated fairly will encourage more willing participation in the justice process.