Alaska Progress Report

Alaska criminals have 6th highest recidivism rate

A new study from the Pew Center on the States finds that Alaska has the sixth highest recidivism rate in the nation. What is recidivism and how is it measured? Glad you asked:

"Recidivism is the act of reengaging in criminal offending despite having been punished. The prison recidivism rate—the subject of this report—is the proportion of persons released from prison who are rearrested, reconvicted or returned to custody within a specific time period. Typically, recidivism studies follow released offenders for three years following their release from prison or placement on probation. Offenders are returned to prison for one of two reasons:

1. For committing a new crime that results in a new conviction or;
2. For a technical violation of supervision, such as not reporting to their parole or probation officer or failing a drug test."

The report compares recidivism in the states between two periods, 1999-2002 and 2004-2007. Unfortunately Alaska is one of states where there is no data for the first period. For the latter period there were 11,619 releases of felons that resulted in a recidivism rate of 50.4%, versus a national average of 43.3% in the same period. The worst rate was 61.2% in Minnesota (WTF?) and the lowest was 22.8% in Oregon.

What to do about it? The Institute of Social and Economic Research has some suggestions: "We found that the state could both reduce the number of Alaskans in prison or jail and save considerable money over the next 20 years, by adding about $4 million a year to the $17 million it currently spends to keep people from returning to prison— or prevent them from ever going there at all."

ACLU finds mixed conditions in Alaska prisons

The ACLU of Alaska (yes, we have one of those) published an in-depth 154-page report of conditions in Alaska prisons. It sounds like the Department of Corrections cooperated and the end result found: "...while some concerning trends and incidents are chronicled in this report, the prison system in Alaska does many things right, especially relative to dysfunctional prison systems in other states. Even though concerns are raised in this report about medical care and suicide prevention in Alaska prisons, the overall mortality rate in Alaska compares well to that of most other states.

"Alaska prisons lack the pervasive gang presence that makes prisoner-on-prisoner violence a frequent event in other states, like California; only three in custody prisoner-on-prisoner homicides are known to have occurred in Alaska facilities. The degree of overcrowding, while serious in Alaska, has not reached the same level seen in many other jails and prison systems around the nation. Regardless of the comparative merits of the Alaska prison system, the ACLU of Alaska believes that improvement should occur wherever possible to meet the legal needs of the prisoners of Alaska."

The authors of the report write approvingly of the DOC's focus on rehabilitation, a theme getting a lot of play these days from our criminal justice system, and appropriately so given that most people who go into a prison are coming back to our communities in the short to medium term. The report also recognizes "...the work of Alaska correctional officers and administrators is an exceptionally challenging one." If you want your own little episode of Oz, curl up with this report.

State of the judiciary 2010

Every year the chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court gives a state of the judiciary speech. This year's iteration covered various topics, perhaps most importantly the flip side of preventing crime, recidivism:

"Probably no problem is of greater concern to us at this time than the alarmingly high rates of recidivism in our state. Fully 66% of offenders — two-thirds of those incarcerated — will reoffend and return to jail at some point in their lives. This is an astounding number, and one that must motivate all of us to examine what causes so many Alaskans to spend their lives cycling in and out of the criminal justice system. Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt chairs the working group’s Prevention and Recidivism Committee. He estimates that at our current rates of recidivism, we will be faced with ever-increasing prison populations that will demand a new correctional facility — at a cost of hundreds of millions — about every ten years, just to keep pace. Obviously, we must do better."

The state legislature recently held a hearing where the topic received lengthy discussion between legislators and the head of the Department of Corrections, that guy with the mullet whose name escapes me. For more information on options in reducing recidivism see the ISER report.

Criminal justice working group update

From the Spring 2009 Alaska Justice Forum: "In 2007, the Alaska Legislature funded the Alaska Judicial Council to coordinate and staff a Criminal Justice Working Group (CJWG)... which adopted as its mission statement the Alaska Constitution’s language about the administration of justice:

"[Article 1, Section 2]
Criminal administration shall be based upon the following: the need for protecting the public, community condemnation of the offender, the rights of victims of crimes, restitution from the offender, and the principle of reformation.

"Following its first meeting in December 2007, the CJWG identified two main aspects of the criminal justice process as their focus: prevention of crime and reducing recidivism, and efficiencies in the system... Much of the Prevention and Recidivism Committee’s work in 2009 has focused on identifying evidence-based programs in the system that effectively reduce recidivism or prevent crime.

"...the UAA Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) reported to the legislature that by spending $4 million annually on expanding intervention and prevention programs, the State of Alaska might save $321 million between 2010 and 2030 by incarcerating fewer people and by delaying prison construction costs (The Cost of Crime, ISER, January 2009). The committee is now considering the next steps to take to accomplish its goals."

1 of 5 Alaska prisoners held out-of-state

From Megan Holland at the Anchorage Daily News: "The Alaska Department of Corrections... currently sends 868, or 20%, of its inmates to a private prison in Arizona because it doesn't have enough prison beds here. The contract with that rented prison is almost up, so Corrections is shopping around for a better deal."

"The number of inmates in the United States boomed in the 1980s and 1990s, in part because of high crime rates and stiffened sentencing laws, particularly for drug offenders, according to the Pew Center on the States. Alaska's prison population also swelled during that time. In the mid-1990s, Alaska started sending prisoners out of state to one of the many private prisons that cropped up in response to the growth industry..."

The department has the laudable goal of reducing Alaska's high recidivism rate of 60%. Even though it costs half as much to house prisoners out-of-state, treatment programs work better when prisoners are in-state. "Whoever gets the new contract, it will end in 2012, which is when Alaska plans to bring all its inmates home to a new 1,500-bed state prison now going up at Point MacKenzie in Mat-Su."

Alaska has 12th highest incarceration rate

From Steve Quinn at the Anchorage Daily News: "Even as the state of Alaska prepares to break ground on a 1,500-bed, medium-security prison, a newly released national study says investments should be in rehabilitating prisoners instead of locking them up.

"According to the report, 1 out of every 88 Alaskans is incarcerated in a state or federal prison, placing it 12th nationally. The reports says 1 out of every 61 adults in Alaska are either on probation or parole, placing it 33rd nationally.

"A separate study presented in January to the Alaska Legislature by the University of Alaska's Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) says Alaska's inmate population could to go from roughly 5,300 to 10,500 by the year 2030. If the state spent an additional $4 million annually on existing rehabilitation and prevention programs, that population could be closer to 9,500, according to the ISER study."

The cost of crime: reducing recidivism

From a new ISER study on The Cost of Crime: "Alaska’s prison population  is among the  fastest-growing  in the U.S., with fve times more  inmates  in 2007 than  in 1981. Spending for the state justice system has nearly doubled since 1981 but the crime rate has dropped only about 30%. Here’s the dilemma for the state... what can it do to hold down the number of inmates and stem the rising costs while at the same time keeping the public safe and using tax dollars efectively?"

Damn good question, given that the only sure thing about inmates is that most of them will end up back in the community. The key is to reduce recidivism: the fewer inmates who commit new crimes after release, the safer we all are and the less money we spend on future policing, courts costs and incarceration. It costs us $44,000 per inmate per year, and 78% of the 82,339 inmates released from 2002-2007 were guilty of misdemeanors. But as always there's a catch: you have to spend money to make money.

The ISER researchers "found that the state could both reduce the number of Alaskans in prison or jail and save considerable money over the next 20 years, by adding about $4 million a year to the $17 million it currently spends to keep people from returning to prison— or prevent them from ever going there at all." The most effective programs include education and job retraining programs, which save about four times what they cost, and programs that treat inmates for substance abuse, which save twice as much.

Juvenile Justice Report Card 2008

There are a lot of complex problems in the public policy arena, and up near the top have to be the issues surrounding juvenile justice. Public safety relies on incarcerating those who are a danger to society and rehabilitating those who will re-enter the community. The younger the criminal the more important rehabilitation becomes, since those individuals have many more years to either prey on society or contribute to it.

The Alaska Division of Juvenile Justice owns this important mission, and they do an exemplary job of reporting on progress. In FY2007 there were 3,876 unique juveniles referred to the DJJ for 9,834 charges. Almost half the offenses were crimes against property, and about 60% of offenders were racial minorities; one of the primary objectives for DJJ is to reduce this proportion.

Their top-level performance measure is appropriately enough recidivism: institutional recidivism was 34% in 2006, and probation recidivism was 29%. DJJ tracks recidivism "only for youth who have been committed to and released from one of the division’s four juvenile treatment facilities. These youth typically have the most intensive needs and are the state’s more chronic and serious juvenile offenders, compared with youth who receive only probation supervision. Recidivism rates for probation and institutional populations are considered separately because of the distinctively different levels of risk and need presented, and the different types of interventions and programming received."