Archival Version

The Comprehensive Indian Resources for Community and Law Enforcement (CIRCLE) Project was launched in the late 1990s as a collaborative effort by seven grantmaking offices and bureaus of the United States Department of Justice (the Corrections Program Office, Violence Against Women Office, Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Community Oriented Policing and Services Office, and National Institute of Justice) and several nongrantmaking agencies. CIRCLE aimed to strengthen tribal justice systems and, through effective tribal-level planning and strategic comprehensive approaches, to better equip Native American nations to combat the interlinked community problems of crime, violence, substance abuse, and juvenile delinquency. The Native American nations invited to participate in the CIRCLE project were the Northern Cheyenne in southeastern Montana, the Oglala Sioux in southwestern South Dakota, and the Zuni in New Mexico. The Native American nations pursued the following strategies: The Northern Cheyenne CIRCLE partners marshaled the resources provided through CIRCLE and their previous experience with comprehensive initiatives to continue strengthening the tribe's justice system, especially as it affected youth. They invested in community policing, responses to family violence, and youth corrections services including construction of a new juvenile detention center.; The Oglala Sioux's efforts were focused on crime reduction through improved law enforcement, court, and corrections functions. Several advocacy goals were closely tied to these efforts, including better police accountability to citizens and more regularized treatment of offenders cited for public intoxication.; The Zuni worked to break the the intergenerational "cycle of violence" through a strategy focused on the reduction of alcohol-related crime, family violence, and youth violence. The tribe's investment in a sophisticated management information system was a centerpiece of their effort.; The focus of this study was a 30-month participatory outcomes evaluation of the CIRCLE Project. The evaluation was a partnership among tribal site-based local evaluation teams composed of community members (the internal evaluators), a national team convened by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (HPAIED) and the Native Nations Institute (NNI) at the University of Arizona (the external evaluators), and federal funders and project organizers within the United States Department of Justice. Due to the participatory nature of the outcomes evaluation, the tribal partners (represented organizationally by Chief Dull Knife College at Northern Cheyenne, Oglala Lakota College at Oglala Sioux, and the Zuni Community Development and Advocacy Center) participated in and often directed core evaluation design and data collection tasks. In particular, they identified the focus, goals, and end products of the CIRCLE Project evaluation at their sites and locally relevant program outcomes and system performance indicators. Throughout the process, the local partners assigned external evaluation researchers to the tasks for which their efforts were most appropriate or most needed. These included advocacy for the evaluation research within the tribe, meeting facilitation, and by-hand data collection.