Despite delays, shutdowns, underfunding and bureaucratic tangles, the bipartisan Indian Law and Order Commission has spent the past several years steadily gathering data on how to fix the dire public safety crisis that plagues tribal lands. The Commission's report, entitled A Roadmap for Making Native America Safer, is finally complete and available for download. Although this wide-ranging document was created specifically for Congress, its radical recommendations will also provide plenty of food for thought to Tribal and state leaders; attorneys, prosecutors and court personnel; Tribal and state law enforcement; and Federal employees in the Department of Justice, the DOI's Office of Justice Services, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Attorneys' offices, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The report, which was written as a critical part of the Tribal Law and Order Act, has as its stated goal, "To end the public safety gap – the legacy of failed Federal laws and policies – that makes Native American and Alaska Native communities frequently less safe, and often dramatically more dangerous, than the rest of our country." A safety gap is a nice way of describing the unsettling statistics on mortality, rape, depression, substance abuse, juvenile delinquency and safety the Roadmap describes. Since ICTMN's readers are familiar with the grim reality of crime in our communities, let's skip right to the proposed solutions.

The topics covered extensively in the report include: jurisdictional reform, making Alaska Natives safer, intergovernmental cooperation, detention, and juvenile justice reform. Two themes are emphasized throughout the report. One is that Tribes need more control when it comes to law enforcement—in fact the report calls for Tribes to have the "freedom to exit the Federal criminal justice system entirely"—and the other is that funding should be stable and non-competitive. Both these recommendations would be sound in an ideal world, but raise a number of questions when being put into practice. Each tribe, nation, pueblo, village and rancheria would choose when—and if—to implement these reforms.