Criminal justice organizations that are operated by indigenous peoples play many important roles beyond simply providing services for indigenous people involved with the criminal justice system or at risk of such involvement. Service provision is their explicit role, but these organizations also have important implicit roles in the community and, in some cases, regionally, nationally, and internationally. In this essay, the author describes and analyzes the explicit and implicit roles of five organizations. Explicit roles include providing a variety of programs--directly related, indirectly related, and not related at all to criminal justice. As important as these explicit roles are, the implicit roles of the organizations are of more interest because they are seldom discussed in the literature and not always utilized to their full potential for the benefit of indigenous organizations and communities alike. The following are appended: (1) Sample Interview Schedule; and (2) Contact Information for The Case Study Organizations. (Contains 1 table and 23 notes.)