People and Impact

Booz Allen Works With DOJ, Tribes to Aid Crime Victims

Strengthening victim services in tribal communities

American Indian and Alaska Native individuals are among the most vulnerable to crime and violence in the United States. In their lifetimes, more than 8 of every 10 (84.3% women, 81.6% men) will experience violence such as physical or psychological abuse by an intimate partner and sexual violence. What’s more, many of these and other crimes, such as stalking and human trafficking, go unreported, and hundreds of murders or missing person cases are unresolved.

Addressing crime victimization is challenging. Despite having disproportionately fewer resources for victim services, American Indian and Alaska Native communities are strong and resilient, offering many cultural healing services to crime survivors. Bringing a rich culture and strong connection to each other and the land, tribal communities are addressing the many challenges connected with crime victimization.

With a focus on partnering with tribal communities to support survivors of crime, Booz Allen was just awarded a 5-year contract to work with the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office for Victims of Crime (OVC). Hear Booz Allen Senior Associate Susannah Numa and Principal Steven Parent talk about the Tribal Victim Services Capacity Building and Technical Assistance Program (Tribal CTAP), what Booz Allen will contribute to this work, and what makes this new program so unique.

Creatively Meeting a Continuum of Needs

Numa calls the goal “sustainable capacity building.” It means working with each unique tribal community to strengthen its ability to provide victim services over time. Initiatives might include setting up and operating a domestic violence shelter or a program connecting people to workforce training and housing. “It’s about meeting the needs of victims along a continuum and supporting them in their healing journeys,” she said.

Booz Allen will contribute experience from similar projects, such as the DOJ’s Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center, and expertise in critical areas like organizational management, strategic communications, technology, and digital solutions. Booz Allen will be a partner to tribal communities listening to their needs and goals in enhancing and improving outcomes for American Indian and Alaska Native victims of crime.

“Think of this work as the operations side of victim services,” Numa said. “How do you develop policies and procedures for case management if you’ve never done this before? How do you integrate volunteers into operations in a way that meets victims’ needs and protects their confidentiality?”

Technology and resource constraints pose very real challenges, so teams often have to get creative, Numa added. “It’s not easy to send staff out for training when there are only two team members providing services, there are no roads to access the communities, and resources can be hours away. You might have to turn an online training course into a text module for trainees who don’t have Wi-Fi or broadband access.”

Booz Allen has proudly supported the Office for Victims of Crime in its efforts to build grassroots national awareness and understanding of the missing or murdered indigenous persons crisis.

Click Expand + to view the video transcript

Expand Collapse

I see the faces of the women who haven't come home yet. Looking at the impact of violence in our communities and the high rates of sexual violence, domestic violence, the high rates of trafficking, and the intersections with poverty and racism and homelessness and all of the things that make this issue more challenging to address. This is not just an Alaska Native, an American Indian issue. This is a people issue. There isn't just one story. We had a young man in my community who was just amazing. And then at some point just disappeared, and... they found him a year later in the flats. And we don't know what happened. We certainly don't know the circumstances, but there was serious suspicion of trauma and other things that may have happened. But every story is like that. The reality is it can happen to any of us. These are important members of our community.

These are our relatives, our mothers, our grandmas, our sisters, our aunties. This is not about something that the victim did. This is not about poor lifestyle choices. This is about a decision that the perpetrator made to cause harm to another individual. How do we heal? Healing comes when we have culturally specific tribal strategies to address healing. Bringing families into a place where they're back to healing and communities into a place where they're back to healing. The Office for Victims of Crime is a federal agency that's dedicated to ensuring healing and justice for victims of all crimes. Our perpetrators are coming from many different populations. We needed to have a venue where we could listen to tribes and we could hear what were the missing and murdered Indigenous persons stories in their communities.

We have an obligation to work as hard as we can to make sure that the voices of tribal communities are heard and that we continue to listen. The tribes came with incredible, heart-wrenching stories, but they also came with solutions and needs. We need more coordination with law enforcement on reservations. Our jurisdiction is very complicated. There are 229 tribes in the State of Alaska, and they cover an area of over 600,000 acres, which literally equates to about 20% of the continental U.S. Most of them are only reachable by plane or by boat. We have 80 communities that are just listed as having no law enforcement whatsoever. We're waiting hours, sometimes days, for somebody to show up. There's so much more to do.

When a loved one is murdered or missing, it doesn't just impact the loved ones of that victim, it impacts entire communities. This trauma just doesn't go away. When something happens, we're gonna respond, we're going to report it, and we're going to stand up and say it's not okay. And now in Minnesota, a huge win is that we have the first-ever Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office in our state government. It's permanent funding. It will not go away. People are talking to each other. People are discussing these issues. They are solving problems with each other. We have heard from Indigenous women that they want services by Native women and for Native women. They need to know that they can come to us and that we are a safe space for them.

We have expanded our guidance so that we can provide the assistance that the families and loved ones of missing and murdered Indigenous people need. Whether or not it's been determined that a crime has occurred. It gives me hope to see our state, tribal, federal people that are responding to this issue. What gives me hope is that I know that change is possible. This job has been all about hope. The relationships that we've developed, the ability to have these conversations has been so important. Working together and working hand-in-hand with our tribal partners, we will be able to put in place the change that needs to happen. We have an incredible group of people coming up behind us who are going to keep pushing this. And it really comes down to resilience. Our tribal people we're incredibly resilient. That always gives me hope.

Customization and ‘Cultural Humility’

Booz Allen approaches capacity building and technical assistance in a way that both recognizes the unique needs of individual communities and programs and builds on no-cost federal resources, Numa and Parent said.

“Programs will be different based on culture, geography, whether they’re in an urban or remote rural area. Understanding unique characteristics and tribal community nuances will be the key to success,” Parent said.

This involves leveraging Booz Allen’s expertise and working with American Indian and Alaska Native practitioners skilled in various topic areas. “Our work moves beyond sharing knowledge to helping communities operationalize that knowledge in the context of their communities,” he said.

Booz Allen is also teaming with tribal entities and tribal members and partnering with woman- and Native American-owned small businesses: Tribal Tech and Unapologetically Rez, which are also veteran-owned.

What’s most important, according to Parent, is “centering Indigenous voices in our program design. We must approach this space with cultural humility.”

For victims of crime in American Indian and Alaska Native communities as well as those providing them vital services, “We’re here to walk with them on their journey,” Parent said.

The OVC’s American Indian and Alaska Native Victim Services Resources microsite can be found at https://ovc.ojp.gov/program/tribal; the Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center site can be found at https://htcbc.ovc.ojp.gov; and the Center's resources are located at https://htcbc.ovc.ojp.gov/library