This article by Marc Levin originally appeared in Anchorage Daily News July 16th, 2018 and is cross-posted from Right on Crime. Passing criminal justice reform is a bit like painting a house: Sometimes, another coat or two of paint may be needed in a few spots. This is the case with… Read More
SB 91 helped them all get back on their feet sooner than they otherwise would have, they said. Mike Van Linden, a reentry case manager for JAMHI Health and Wellness, was able to get a temporary driver’s license after his felony DUI as part of SB 91, he said in his talk. Being able to get that, he said, helped him get a job and function better than he otherwise would have.
We don’t know where this discussion will ultimately go, but it is heartening to see our lawmakers starting out by taking this process seriously. Good for them — and us.
The wave of crime afflicting Southcentral Alaska may be showing signs of leveling off. Some types of property crime, like car theft, are even dropping, according to Anchorage police statistics. This may be one result of beefed-up law enforcement, with more police on the streets in Anchorage and more prosecutors… Read More
Alaska’s system for dealing with seriously mentally ill criminal defendants has been pushed to its breaking point by an increasing number of defendants entering the system combined with a severely limited capacity to treat them at the state’s only psychiatric hospital — which was in such disarray that state officials in February turned it over to a controversial private company to manage.
We all have heard about the services that would lose funding under Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget. Less attention has gone to who would make money off of it. Donna Arduin, the state budget director from out of state, has a history of using state budgets to funnel money toward companies that she has ties with. Will history repeat itself in Arduin’s visit to Alaska?
Frontiersman — Crime in Alaska continued its dismal upswing in 2017, state public safety officials told legislators in Juneau Feb. 5, but an encouraging new development is that fewer released offenders, for more serious crimes, are having to be returned to prison. A sharp decline in “recidivism,” or going back… Read More
Alaska Public Media — Police officials in Anchorage say the rate of car thefts in the city has dropped dramatically after hitting a peak in 2017. According to data from the Anchorage Police Department, that year 3,122 vehicles were stolen. For a city with around 294,000 people, that is slightly more… Read More
This piece was also published in the Anchorage Daily News on February 1, 2019. Gov. Mike Dunleavy declared a “war on criminals” in his State of the State address, promising more state troopers, prosecutors and reopening the courthouse on Friday afternoons. If the state is going to reduce crime, however, it… Read More
This piece was also published in the Anchorage Daily News on January 24, 2019. Since the passage of Senate Bill 91, communities across Alaska have been engaged in an important and ongoing conversation about how safety and justice can coexist. The pretrial reforms enacted in the bill led to an… Read More
