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In major crime cases that occur on tribal land, trafficking included, justice is most effective when federal authorities—the FBI, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and U.S. attorneys—track the issue, investigate, and prosecute. Federal authorities have the duty and responsibility under statute to do so. The latest national figures, however, show that federal prosecutors declined nearly half of all cases in Indian Country in 2017—many of them cases of sexual violence. Since 2015, the District of New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s Office, the third busiest district in the country for Indian Country cases, has declined 69 percent of cases that fall under the Offenses Committed Within Indian Country statute and 80 percent of cases falling under child abuse in Indian Country, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse research center at Syracuse University.
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