The tribal drug court movement has grown quickly; today there are about 50 tribal drug courts in the United States. Chico Gallegos, associate director of the Native American Alliance Foundation, talks here about the differences between state and tribal drug courts, as well as the challenges ahead.
How many tribal drug courts are there in the U.S.?
Right now there are probably around 50. Given that there are probably about 200 or so tribal justice systems in the U.S., that means that roughly a quarter of them have drug court. That is pretty significant. The tribal drug court movement has grown very quickly in a relatively short period of time.
How are tribal drug courts different from "traditional" drug courts?
I think the biggest difference is in what the drug court in the tribal context seeks to accomplish. State drug courts focus on recidivism. While that is also a priority for tribal drug courts, they look beyond re-arrest and re-conviction rates and really focus on the community: Is there a change in the community? How has the community been impacted? What do the elders say?
Success really depends on how much the community gets behind the drug court. Substance abuse is such a community-based problem that without the community’s support the drug court won’t be sustained. There’s a lot of effort focused on making sure that the tribal leaders know and understand the concept, and that the community supports the level of structure and accountability drug court is going to bring. So from there it becomes about: What are the tribal values and how are those going to be improved by the development of a drug court? Are the participants now going to be more involved in traditional activities and ceremonial activities? We really look at it from a community-wide perspective.
Another difference is how much the families are involved in the process. Let’s say an adult tribal drug court has 15 clients. That court is probably treating more in the area of 50 or 60 people because engaging the family is a cultural norm, part of the way we do things in Indian country. Even the definition of the family is going to be different—we’ve got aunts and uncles and extended family and clan relationships, so over time the family that’s engaged is broadened to where you have a significant number of people being serviced by a drug court.
Are drug courts specific to each tribe? How varied are they?
There’s quite a bit of diversity. You just have to look at the diversity of tribes. Some tribes have a western approach, an adversarial system, and the drug court is a non-adversarial sub-docket of that system. Others take a much more traditional, non-adversarial approach—some have peace-making circles, and in others, like in the Southwest, the governors of the pueblos serve as the court, resolving disputes based on the oral traditions and customs of the pueblo.
That’s what has been the greatest strength of the drug court model—its flexibility. Once the tribe understands what the vision and goals of the drug court are, it’s able to look at the resources in the community and then realign those existing resources with the drug court model—whether they’re cultural resources, treatment resources, judicial or law enforcement resources.
Has there been any resistance to the idea of drug courts from more traditional people?
The traditional people in the tribal communities generally are the most supportive because they’re the ones that are most concerned about the loss of tribal values that always accompanies substance abuse. That is our biggest enemy in our native communities. We’re in an improved place politically and economically, but substance abuse continues to devastate our communities and our tribes, and traditional people are at the forefront of that battle. So while any idea supported by the federal government is going to be suspect at first, once the traditional people understand what the model entails they are generally the biggest supporters of it. Not every tribe has rallied behind the model, but most people who are exposed to it express an interest in it and become very excited and optimistic about the potential the model has for the tribal community, especially when they know they’re not locked into a rigid model.
Obviously there are certain components that we want to be able to provide in order to be considered a drug court, but when the people who are looking into possibly planning and developing a drug court see that the model is really designed to meet the unique needs of each community, that’s very empowering and very attractive.
How do you engage the community?
It varies from tribe to tribe. Drug court planners will make presentations at tribal council meetings, and use whatever media is available in the tribal community as a platform to deliver the message. But there’s really not a lack of need. When you talk to people in the tribal community, everybody is able to articulate the need for finding some meaningful way to curtail the vicious cycle of substance abuse and crime.
I think what gives people some pause is the level of accountability that will be required by the drug court. Before the introduction of drug courts, programs really weren’t able to utilize the leverage of a tribal justice system to create healing. When it becomes apparent that there is going to be a very consistent and permanent level of accountability leveraged by the tribal justice system, then people pause and say, “This is real.”
What kind of sanctions and incentives are used?
The tribes really try to utilize sanctions that meet the needs of the community first. If there is a tribal event, a feast day or a powwow or a ceremony, the participant may be asked to help tend the fires, chop the wood, cook, clean—whatever the needs are at that particular tribal event. Also, there is a great emphasis on the needs of elders. In our court we try to meet the needs of the elders first. If any elders need their yards looked after, or someone to chop wood for them, a participant may be sanctioned to perform those tasks. And those are all very native traditional responsibilities that were, historically, just part of everyday life. So we try to utilize the system of sanctions and incentives to revitalize some of the norms and values of the community.
Incentives and sanctions often overlap, and depend on the individual. Because we’re outside of Albuquerque, some incentives may include going to a movie in Albuquerque, but they may also include involvement in a pro-tribal or pro-traditional way in a ceremony or a feast. It could be that because of their substance abuse that the offenders weren’t allowed to participate in ceremonies, and that’s a real incentive: to be re-introduced into the tradition or ceremonial life of the tribe.
So the healing process and the treatment process are very much linked to a reintegration into tribal traditions?
That’s the goal. Some tribes are more traditional than others, and some more assimilated. It comes down to an integration of both western and native traditional healing processes. Most tribal drug courts will utilize western approaches, but they integrate them with native traditional healing practices—with medicine men, with ceremonies, with sweat lodges. Before, when Native American offenders were sent to treatment, they were usually sent off the reservation, outside of the tribal community, and the treatment approaches really didn’t incorporate anything that spoke to their cultural or traditional values. Now, the platform is tribal. So anything that is western is brought into the tribal fold rather than the tribal aspect being brought into a western fold.
Have there been many challenges in integrating the two?
Not as much as one would think initially, simply because the western treatment approaches are very much engrained in what people normally view as substance abuse treatment. Any time anyone needed treatment for substance abuse, a western approach was taken. The challenge has often been really internalizing the concept that you can use native traditional methods. You can use medicine people, ceremonies. For the federal government to come in and actually sanction that is a big deviation from history. The challenge is in being able to internalize that, then run with it and implement it at a level that’s long-term. Tribes aren’t used to the federal government saying, “Use your ways and we’ll pay for it.”
How successful have the courts been?
Right now tribes are just reaching the point where they can undergo some more formal evaluations. I know that South Central New Mexico’s Mescalero Apache, one of the longer running adult tribal drug courts, is running under a 10 percent recidivism rate. So in terms of recidivism, they’re as or more successful than other drug courts. South Dakota’s Sisseton-Wahpeton is another long-standing drug court that is funded permanently by the tribe and actually engaged in some multi-jurisdictional efforts with the state and federal courts.
The biggest challenge for tribal drug courts is sustainability—sustainability beyond federal funding, being able to diversify funding in order to sustain the efforts.