Census of Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies, 2018

The Census of Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies (CTLEA) is the first complete enumeration of tribal law enforcement agencies authorized to issue citations and make arrests for crime committed in Indian country. The CTLEA gathers administrative and operational information from tribally operated police departments, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) police, and the Alaska Village Public Safety Officer's (VPSO) program operating in the United States during 2018. The CTLEA helps fulfill the Bureau of Justice Statistics' legislative mandate under the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 (TLOA; P.L. 111-211, 124 Stat. 2258 Section 251(b)) to establish and implement a tribal crime data collection system.
Data for the CTLEA were collected by NORC, at the University of Chicago, in collaboration with the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Indian Country section. The CTLEA consists of two surveys specific to tribally operated law enforcement agencies and the BIA police departments. The Alaska VPSO program is sponsored and funded by the Alaska State Troopers, which completed the tribally operated law enforcement agency questionnaire on behalf of all the VPSOs. Due to the unique territorial and criminal jurisdiction in Alaska Native Villages, only two tribally operated law enforcement agencies (the Chickaloon and Metlakatla Indian Community) met the eligibility criteria to be included in the CTLEA. Data for the 2019 CTLEA were collected through mail, email, and telephone nonresponse follow-up. Data on the number and type of tribally operated law enforcement and BIA agencies were obtained from all eligible federally recognized tribes. The final universe of eligible respondents included 234 tribally operated law enforcement agencies and the Alaska VPSO program, of which 215 (91.9%) participated in the survey. The 23 BIA police departments operating in the United States completed the survey.