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In this collection of essays emanating from the Southern Ute Indian Community Safety Survey (SUICSS), the theoretical constructs of Native American Indian cultural values (CV) are compared with those of collective efficacy (CE); an idea proposed by Sampson, R.J., Raudenbush, S.W., and Earls F. in their study The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, as reported in SCIENCE (Aug. 15, 1997), Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multi-Level Study of Collective Efficacy, 277, 919-924. It was found this sub-cultural group´s cultural values are more robust predictors of a variety of social phenomena than were the collective efficacy measures.

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Julie C. Abril received her PhD in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine in 2005. She has published widely in the areas of crime and violence, victimization, prisoner issues, identity, and on concerns of women and Native American Indians. She is the author of nine books on Native American Indians and crime.

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