Native Americans and Sentencing 1 The Sentencing of Native Americans in the State of Nebraska

Examining the issues related to possible disparity in sentencing has been a focus of criminal justice research for decades. One of the less examined minority groups reviewed within this work is that of Native Americans. In South Dakota, where there is a much larger Native American population, there appears to be an issue regarding the sentencing of Native American offenders. According to research done by Richard Braunstein and Steve Feimer (2003), the ultimate question was left unanswered as to whether or not a double standard exists in South Dakota, and whether “the lives of American Indians [were] valued as much as the lives of Whites in the community ” (p. 11). Another work done in South Dakota was from a pair of researchers named Elsie Meeks and Frank Pommersheim (2003), who found that “The American Indian community in the State believes that law enforcement and the courts treat non-Indians more fairly than Indians in similar situations, [and] that there are two systems of justice in South Dakota: one for non-Indians and another for Indians ” (p. 1). Further, this pair also found that, “Native Americans were ‘over represented in the Sout