Incarcerating Native American Youth in Federal Bureau of Prisons Facilities: The Problem with Federal Jurisdiction over Native Youth under the Major Crimes Act
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Incarcerating Native American Youth in Federal
Bureau of Prisons Facilities: The Problem with Federal
Jurisdiction Over Native Youth Under the Major
Crimes Act
REBEKAH JOAB*
Within the context of the United States system of incarceration, there is a growing
consensus upon which both sides of the political spectrum can agree: there are far too
many people in American prisons.! It is well known that minority populations are
overrepresented within the criminal justice system.2 Many scholars trace the current
state of discrimination against minorities to their histories as oppressed groups. For
example, criminal law scholar Michelle Alexander compares the current state of black
incarceration to the Jim Crow South saying that both are radicalized system(s) of
social control and that today's system of mass incarceration condemns millions of
blacks to a hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social
exclusion.'
Police brutality against minorities has recently given rise to the Black Lives Matter
campaign, which is aimed at illuminating the issue of police brutality against black
Americans and the treatment of black Americans within the criminal justice system.
While racial tension along the black-white dichotomy is a generally recognized real-
ity, not all racial discrimination issues are given space on mainstream public forums.
For instance, while the Black Lives Matter campaign has continued to become a
divisive issue in political debate, there is little to no awareness in mainstream
American culture of the Native Lives Matter campaign, initiated by the Lakota
People's Law Project.' Analogous to the historical, cultural, and political adversity
that still influences the experience of black America, the history of Native Americans-
most notably in this context the eradication and displacement of the Native people
and culture-is the basis of the current state of Native life.' It is little wonder why the
Native Lives Matter movement is barely recognized, when Native populations have a
history of isolation and cultural diminution to which most Americans are willfully
blind.'
* Juris Doctor Candidate, 2017, Georgetown University Law Center. @ 2017, Rebekah Joab.
1. See Joan Petersilia & Francis T. Cullen, Liberal but Not Stupid: Meeting the Promise of Downsizing
Prisons, 2 STAN. J. CRIM. L. & POL'Y 1, 6 (2015).
2. See Anders Walker, The New Jim Crow? Recovering the Progressive Origins of Mass Incarceration, 41
HASTINGS CONST. L.Q. 845, 845 (2014).
3. Id. (quoting Michelle Alexander, THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLOR-
BLINDNESS 188 (2010)).
4. Julian Brave NoiseCat, 13 Issues Facing Native People Beyond Mascots and Casinos, HUFFINGTON POST
(July 30, 2015, 11:16 AM), https://perma.cc/U8GQ-PTXJ.
5. See COHEN'S HANDBOOK OF FEDERAL INDIAN LAW § 1.03 (Nell Jessup Newton ed., 2012) [hereinafter,
COHEN'S HANDBOOK] (explaining the history of allotment and assimilation that concentrated native people
onto reservations while also imposing on Natives the norms of Western culture).
6. Lydia Millet, NativeLives Matter, Too, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 13,2015), https://perma.cc/R9KD-HHT7.
155](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/gjmodco9&div=14&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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