Cultural Efficacy: Satisfaction with Native American Indian Reservation Tribal Services and Reporting Violent Victimization

Much rhetoric surrounds reported violent victimization occurring within Indian Country. Official government statistics, for example, are too fraught with challenges to their validity thus leading to grave discrepancies in reported victimization occurring among Native American Indians. It is hypothesized that tribal group members who reside on an Indian reservation and who report higher levels of satisfaction with tribally-provided services (such as the tribal police, tribal court and crime victim services) are more likely to report violent victimization than those who negatively perceive these services because of internalized cultural values and a unified cultural identity, known as cultural efficacy. Within this work, I use mixed methods to measure the associations between reports of high / low satisfaction with tribally-aovided services to reports of violent victimization from members of a Native American Indian tribal group residing on a reservation. Individuals who reported a high level of satisfaction with tribal criminal justice services were more likely to report violent victimization than others. It may be beneficial for facilitating victimization reports if common perceptions of the tribal criminal justice system were improved.