In 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice initiated a partnership with three Indian nations and implemented the Comprehensive Indian Resources for Community and Law Enforcement (CIRCLE) Project. In this project, tribes were provided with incentives and opportunities that helped them consider how the individual components of their tribal justice systems might work together to strengthen their approaches to pressing crime and social problems.

This paper is a project evaluation that aims to understand whether the design of CIRCLE was useful to tribes in their efforts to strengthen their justice systems; in particular, what design features seemed most helpful and why.