Incarceration
What trends appear in admissions, releases, revocations, sentencing, offense categories, age, gender, and geography?
TTO Indigenous Justice Research Center
South Dakota Indigenous Justice Trends
A free public research project examining incarceration, jurisdiction, reentry, prevention, healing, public funding, and community safety across South Dakota.
Purpose
Understanding the systems affecting Indigenous people without defining communities through harm.
This project will examine what public information reveals, what it leaves out, and how incarceration, prevention, reentry, behavioral health, healing, jurisdiction, funding, and community-led solutions shape safety and wellbeing.
Community knowledge comes first.
- Research will be made freely available for public education.
- Indigenous people will not be reduced to statistics, deficits, incarceration, or stereotypes.
- Data limitations, missing records, and conflicting definitions will be clearly identified.
- The project will examine prevention, healing, cultural connection, reentry, and community strengths—not only harm.
- Sources and methods will be documented so others can review, question, and build upon the work.
Research questions
What are we trying to understand?
Jurisdiction
How do tribal, federal, state, county, and municipal systems divide responsibility, information, and accountability?
Reentry
What housing, employment, treatment, mentoring, cultural, and family supports are available after incarceration?
Youth and Prevention
What resources are directed toward diversion, education, early intervention, cultural connection, and family support?
Healing and Safety
Which community-led approaches strengthen accountability, recovery, relationships, stability, and collective wellbeing?
Public Investment
Where is public funding directed, and how much emphasis is placed on incarceration compared with prevention and healing?
Research method
A transparent and repeatable process.
TTO will document how information is gathered, reviewed, categorized, analyzed, and interpreted.
1. Collect
Gather public reports, datasets, policies, budgets, legislation, journalism, program information, and other verifiable sources.
2. Review
Examine each source for relevance, duplication, date, jurisdiction, definitions, completeness, and reliability.
3. Classify
Organize information by topic, population, geography, system, intervention, outcome, and source type.
4. Compare
Identify patterns, changes over time, missing information, inconsistencies, and differences between systems.
5. Interpret
Place findings within the realities of history, jurisdiction, public investment, community strengths, and available supports.
6. Publish
Release findings, charts, source notes, methods, limitations, and practical community-safety recommendations free online.
Potential source areas
Information will be gathered across multiple systems.
Corrections and Courts
Statistical reports, admissions, releases, supervision, sentencing, court activity, and correctional policies.
Tribal and Federal Systems
Tribal justice information, federal Indian Country prosecution materials, jurisdictional policies, and community-response efforts.
Community Programs
Reentry, behavioral health, victim services, youth diversion, cultural programming, workforce development, and healing.
Budgets and Grants
Public budgets, grant awards, funding notices, contracts, program investments, and implementation information.
Legislation and Policy
State and federal legislation, administrative rules, agency policies, planning documents, and public testimony.
Public Reporting
Journalism, public statements, community reports, investigative findings, and documented lived experience.
Data limitations will be part of the findings.
Justice information may be separated across tribal, federal, state, county, and municipal systems. Definitions, reporting practices, time periods, and racial classifications may differ.
TTO will not combine numbers that cannot be responsibly compared. Missing information will be identified openly rather than replaced with unsupported assumptions.
Project status
Building the foundation carefully.
Research framework
Define the research questions, topic categories, source standards, and data-limitation rules.
Source inventory
Identify reliable public datasets, reports, policies, budgets, community programs, and historical materials.
Data review
Clean records, remove duplicates, document exclusions, compare definitions, and verify source relevance.
First public release
Publish the initial South Dakota findings, charts, methodology, limitations, and community recommendations.
Community knowledge
Help identify information that should be examined.
TTO welcomes public reports, datasets, policy documents, program information, corrections, and source recommendations. Submission does not guarantee inclusion, and all information will be reviewed before use.
Share a Source with TTO