In verse two of Jay-Z’s “Reminder” off of his 2009 The Blueprint 3 album, he raps:
Back-to-back, double plat’, I did what you won’t
Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t
Ain’t nothin’ changed for, me ‘cept the year it is
I think I have to send you a reminder, here it is
I must remind you that numbers can be deceptive, especially when relevant information is missing. The journey towards this realization began with an inquiry into the total number of women who were released from federal prison from 2001 to 2021.
Graph 1 shows the number of women released from federal prison by race during this period. These results are expected considering the representation of these groups of women in our general population. We should see more White and Black females released from prison over this time than we do Asian and Native American females.
Graph 1: Females Released from Federal Prison by Race 
Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons SENTRY System
These Numbers Can’t Be Right
Disaggregating the data by offense type led to an astonishing conclusion. When isolating the women who were released by type of offense, Native American females appear to be incredibly more violent compared to other female racial groups (see Graph 2). According to these data, 30% of Native American females released from federal prison during this period were serving time due to a conviction for a violent offense compared to 4%, 1.9%, and 1.5% for Black, White, and Asian females, respectively.
Graph 2: Released Females With Violent Offenses by Race
Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons SENTRY System
In addition, these results match the incarceration trends found in the report we released last year on federal female incarceration trends during the same period. Does this mean that Native American females are egregiously more violent than other females? Absolutely not!
What’s Missing?
While the above results, which suggest that Native American women have a relatively high rate of violent offense convictions, may be misleading, the reported amount of violence within the Native American community is both accurate and alarming. This report, from a study funded by the National Institute of Justice, found that more than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native males and females have experienced violence in their lifetime. While this is a horrific rate, it is not likely the cause of the misleading stats in the tables above.
The misleading data in question are likely the result of a Tribal Prisoner Program (TPP) that was first established as a pilot program as part of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010. This program was made permanent in The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022, and authorizes the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to accept, pay for, and house in BOP custody certain offenders convicted in Tribal court. The main criteria to be eligible for the program is that the offender must be convicted of a violent crime.
Aha! Mystery solved. The disparity we see in rates of violent offenses between Native American females and the other racial groups is not because Native American women are violent but because only their violent offenders convicted in their tribal court system are housed in the BOP, not those convicted of other crimes.
As we see here, numbers can and do lie. It’s up to us to identify the truth.
Happy “International Day of Happiness”
