Conference papers

Follow

• 

  A Comparison by Race of Juvenile Referrals in Alaska

  N. E. Schafer

  A data set comprised of all juveniles referred to Alaska youth corrections in the fiscal years 1992–1996 shows disproportionate referral of Alaska Native and African American youth when compared to their proportions in the general population. Minorities also appear more likely than white youth to accumulate multiple referrals. Random samples selected within each racial group are used to seek extra-legal factors which may account for some of the disparity. Information on family and home life, school, personal problems, and the details of each referrals and each referral outcome were extrapolated from the files of the sample which included 39 white youth, 35 Alaska Native youth, and 37 African American youth. Special attention was paid to youth who accumulated multiple referrals.

• 

  Disproportionate Minority Processing of Females: A Comparison of Native, Black and White Juveniles

  N. E. Schafer

  An examination of four years of statewide female juvenile referral data showed that Native girls are referred in disproportionate numbers and tend to have lengthier records. Underage drinking was one of the most frequent referral reasons. Because many of the Native females were from rural communities, the disproportionate referrals may be a factor of the smallness of the communities, in which misbehavior is more readily noticed. Examination of a subset of files for girls with multiple referrals showed that the actual behavior was often not particularly grave and that many of the girls with multiple referrals came from very unstable backgrounds.

• 

  A Preliminary Examination of Minority Referrals to the Alaska Juvenile Justice System

  N. E. Schafer, Richard W. Curtis, and Cassie Atwell

  The disproportionate processing of minorities in the justice system has been noted with growing concern nationally as well as at the state level. In Alaska, as in other states, the primary basis for concern is that minorities are overrepresented among the adult prison population. The realization that this disproportionality appears in other justice system venues has led nationally to a number of research initiatives with a focus on the overrepresentation of juveniles. This paper analyzes referral data from the Alaska Division of Family and Youth Services (DFYS) for 1992–1995 to provide a statistical overview of disproportionate minority contact in the Alaska juvenile justice system, providing comparative data for referrals of Alaska Native, African American, and white youth.

• 

  Disproportionate Detention of Minorities: A Case Study of One State's Compliance with the Mandates of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act

  N. E. Schafer and Richard W. Curtis

  Pursuant to Section 223(a)(23) of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, states must examine whether minority youth are disproportionately detained in relation to their proportion in the general population. For a preliminary assessment of Alaska’s compliance, five and a half years of detention data (1990–June 1995) for the state of Alaska are analyzed to assess the detention of minority and non-minority youth. A number of factors are used to compare racial groups: type of offense, prior record, gender, age, length of detention, etc.

• 

  Centralization to Consolidation: Some Historical Antecedents of Unified Correctional Systems

  N. E. Schafer

  Autonomous prisons in the nineteenth century were often inefficient and highly political. Many state legislatures and governors attempted to move toward centralized control of their state facilities. In the twentieth century the Federal Bureau of Prisons was seen by the Wickersham Commission as a model for institutional centralization. Consolidation of all correctional services was recommended by the National Advisory Commission in 1973. Today only a few states – Alaska, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont – have fully unified adult correctional systems; each is described.

• 

  State Operated Jails: How and Why

  Schafer E. N/A

  From the 1931 Wickersham Commission through the 1967 President's Commission and the 1973 National Advisory Commission, criminal justice experts and observers have recommended that state governments assume responsibility for jail operations. Currently six states operate jails: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Vermont. An examination of jail operations in these states shows that history and tradition as well as geography and politics form the impetus for state assumption of jail operations.

• 

  Victim-Offender Mediation in Anchorage

  Lawrence C. Trostle and Patrick Cunningham

  Victim-offender mediation programs provide an opportunity for victims to meet the offenders face-to-face in the presence of a trained mediator for the purpose of resolving the injury of the crime in some way. Mediation is offered as a diversion from the justice system which the offender may accept to avoid more formal adjudication. This paper describes a pilot victim-offender mediation program in Anchorage which involves juveniles accused of certain offenses and the victims of those crimes.

• 

  Policing the Arctic: The North Slope of Alaska

  John E. Angell and Lawrence C. Trostle

  Geographic size and lack of roads, among other factors, contribute to unique difficulties in providing effective law enforcement and public safety services to residents of the North Slope Borough of Alaska. Despite comprehensive plans laid in the mid-1970s, the North Slope Borough has not been successful in implementing a broad, multicultural community public safety organizational design. The more traditional professional law enforcement agency which has evolved is perceived by some people as having community and employee relations problems. This paper provides a brief history of law enforcement on the North Slope and presents selected data from a 1993 survey of employees of the North Slope Borough Department of Public Safety (NSBDPS). The data support a hypothesis that indigenous personnel with strong roots in a minority community will be more committed to the community police organization than would be employees without such roots.

• 

  Reorganizing Corrections: Revisiting the Recommendations of the National Advisory Commission

  N. E. Schafer

  In 1973 the National Advisory Commission on Standards and Goals recommended that correctional services be consolidated under a single state agency, arguing that cost efficiencies, improved communication, and greater employee professionalism would result. The National Advisory Commission advocated state rather than local control of probation, and executive rather than judicial branch control of probation services. It encouraged development of regional rather than local jails and recommended that states assume the operation and control of all local detention and correctional functions. This paper examines some of the arguments for consolidation of correctional services and attempts to determine the kinds of reorganization that have occurred since 1973.

• 

  Equitable over Time? — Evaluating the 'Costs' of Interstate Compact Participation

  Schafer E. N/A and Leslie Wenderoff

  The Interstate Compact for the Supervision of Parolees and Probationers (ICSPP) provides for the supervision of offenders in states other than those in which they were sentenced. It is assumed that the number of offenders entering a state for supervision is, over time, approximately equal to the number leaving for supervision elsewhere. Thus the net "cost" to the state would, over time, be zero. Data on Alaska's participation in the Interstate Compact formed the impetus for a study of Interstate Compact clients processed through the Anchorage probation office. This study suggests that numbers should not be the only measure of cost: demographic and offense characteristics of clients, as well as their supervision needs, should be factored into any cost assessment.

• 

  Selective Return of Criminal Law Activity to Alaska Native Villages: Neocolonialism or Revitalization of Tribal Sovereignty?

  Conn N/A

  As Alaska struggles with criminal justice delivery to Alaska Native villages, many experiments have been undertaken or postulated which would reinvigorate criminal law activity in these rural places. Initial enthusiasm for alleviation of burdens on the formal system has been replaced with a state concern that village activity will be viewed as tribal activity. The author isolates areas where the needs of the state and villages can be met without feeding the flames of the conflict between state sovereignty and village tribal sovereignty.

• 

  Why Canadian Indian Law Is Important to Alaskans, Why Indian Law in Alaska Is Important to Canada

  Conn N/A

  Federal policy governing indigenous peoples in Canada has been marked by repeated glances south and west (at Alaska) as it has been formed through parliamentary edict, case law and Constitutional entrenchment. Although rooted in a common Crown policy, the discrete history of Canadian policy has diverged from American practice even as the country's historical and its political development have diverged. Unlike United States policy, the underpinnings of Canadian Indian law as it related to aboriginal title land rights and the limits and potential of tribal sovereignty are only now coming into focus. This belated articulation of Indian rights parallels similar developments in Alaska where land rights and tribal rights are only now being defined. In both Alaska and Canada, hunting and fishing rights and tribal governance are political and legal matters whose impact on resource development and control by provinces and states make neat application of older Indian law concepts less predictable. Cases in either place offer guidance to federal courts in either country within a modern debate over public land rights. The author suggests that attorneys in each place monitor case law and legislation only now emerging.

• 

  Alaska as a Case Study of OJJDP-Mandated Jail Monitoring

  Schafer E. N/A and Emily E. Read

  The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency prevention has mandated that all states monitor jail records for the presence of juveniles and inspect jails and lock-ups in which juveniles might be detained for sight and sound separation. The experience of Alaska in complying with this mandate is instructive. In the largest state in the union 99 facilities in a monitoring universe of 111 (89.1 %) are accessible only by air or water. Alaska's jail monitoring plan accommodated this inaccessibility. The plan and 1989 monitoring activities are explained and discussed. As the largest state in the Union Alaska has had some unique problems complying with the mandate of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Act to monitor secure facilities for the presence of juveniles. In spite of these problems Alaska has produced a model monitoring plan and has successfully completed three years of compliance monitoring activities. The monitoring process and the problems associated with monitoring activities are useful for other states to consider as they review their monitoring plans.

• 

  Telling Them What They Want to Hear: Involvement with the Indigenous Populations as a Lawyer-Legal Anthropologist in Alaska and Canada

  Stephen Conn

  For some purposes — most notably when the legal question of tribal sovereignty is pursued — Alaska has held firm to the principle that all Alaskans are subject to a single law and that village tribes lack legal authority. Yet in practice the history of Alaska bush justice has been to employ informal, extralegal approaches until formal law could muster sufficient resources to intervene and displace informal law.This paper describes the tension between official and unofficial approaches to solving problems such as alcohol, gasoline sniffing, and substance abuse and the attendant social disorder in rural Alaska villages where the structures of formal law and law enforcement are largely absent, and explores the role lawyers can play to improve the legal system within villages.

• 

  From Land Rights to Sovereignty: Curious Parallels between Alaskan and Canadian Indigenous Peoples

  Conn N/A

  Alaska Natives and Canadian aboriginal peoples have been late bloomers in securing land claims based on aboriginal title and its extinguishment. While the reasons for this delay relate to the discrete development of Indian policy in each country, both groups now find themselves seeking explicit governmental authority to regulate this domain. Despite the juridical premise that only those groups capable of controlling land have aboriginal claims to cede and/or extinguish, modern groups must secure federal confirmation of their sovereign powers. Barriers in each country are similar; so are the strategies employed.

• 

  Legal Culture Blindness and Canadian Indian Law

  Conn N/A

  This paper explores the special problems that specialists in federal Indian law in the United States face when they attempt to understand the legal position of indigenous peoples in Canada, make comparisons and offer assistance and advice. Although the roots of Canadian Indian law in British Crown policy are similar to those of the United States, the evolution of United States and Canadian Indian law occurred in patterns which were as distinctly different as has been the evolution of each country. Although some comparisons can be made between the two patterns of legal development, especially in the realm of policy changes directed at indigenous populations, the core of each legal relationship is very different, especially as it relates to federalism, the constitutional process and role of the courts, and public land issues. Therefore, while models of Indian legal achievements in one country are often used to induce governmental change in the other, especially in Alaska among the United States and in Canada, generally, advocates and United States specialists must exercise extreme caution to avoid legal culture blindness based on a lack of appreciation of the very different historical development of each nation.

• 

  State Enforcement of Alaska Native Tribal Law: The Congressional Mandate of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

  Conn N/A and Bart Kaloa Garber

  Law journals, newspapers, and the courts all document Native unrest and dissatisfaction with state management of Native subsistence lifestyles. It is the thesis of this paper that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) requires the state to discover and incorporate community-derived tribal law — customs and traditions regarding the taking and gathering of wild, renewable resources — as the applicable minimum federal standard to the extent that conservation of the resource permits.

• 

  Smooth the Dying Pillow: Alaska Natives and Their Destruction [original paper]

  Stephen Conn

  The policy for Native self-determination in Alaska developed by the Congress and the state has sought to replace a tribal model of governance with a body of legislation which confirms land rights without the direct political involvement of Alaska Native villages. However, the author argues, the absence of tribes as formal political structures has contributed to a loss of self-determination among Alaska Natives and to serious negative effects on Native village life.

• 

  Avoidance of the Federal Acknowledgment Process: Two Hundred New Petitioners Waiting at the Door

  Conn N/A

  Two hundred plus Native villages in Alaska may join the legion of Indian groups in the long line before the gates of the federal acknowledgment process established by Congress to alleviate and rationalize selection of those groups deserving of acknowledgment as Indian tribes. Such a possibility might well seem absurd to those who have studied the pre-contact or modern lifestyle of Alaska Indians, Inuit, Yup'ik and Aleut. Their significant commitment to subsistence, their political autonomy in pursuit of a modern Native land claims settlement, and their continuing residence in rural and traditional settings has long been a matter of both academic and political record. Yet for all of this, recent court opinions by the Alaska Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, as well as a flurry of federal district court decisions, have questioned whether Alaska Native villages were and are historical tribes and whether Congress had recognized them. The State of Alaska has taken a uniformly hostile position to the proposition that Alaska Native Villages are self-governing tribal entities. The author explores the historical reasons leading to this situation and calls for the legal and historical research critical to the survival of the legal identities of tribal communities and their land base.

• 

  Pretrial Intervention and Chronic Offenders

  Schafer E. N/A

  The Alaska Pretrial Intervention (PTI) program of the Alaska Department of Law operated in 13 locations throughout the state from 1983 to 1986, when economic pressures resulted in the program's termination. The program was intended to provide an alternative to full prosecution in cases where the offense behavior did not appear to warrant it. This paper analyzes recidivism in the PTI program through examination of chronic offenders, defined as PTI clients who were rearrested for the same charge as that for which they had initially been referred to the program.

• 

  Visiting Rules and Regulations: A Preliminary Study

  Schafer E. N/A

  Visiting rules and regulations from 71 long-term adult correctional facilities from 31 states were collected for review. The rules are divided into five areas: visitor application, visitor processing, contraband, conduct, and dress codes. They are reviewed in the light of recent standards which stress the importance of encouraging visits. Suggestions and recommendations for change are included.

• 

  Punishment in Pre-Colonial Indigenous Societies in North America [original paper]

  Stephen Conn

  Using northern Athabascan villages as examples, the author discusses how punishment in indigenous societies was traditionally interwoven with other societal functions. The influence of alcohol and the western legal process changed post-colonial societies and their methods of punishment because punishment decisions in indigenous societies were traditionally arrived at through group deliberation, whereas the western legal system works in a hierarchical fashion. The author concludes that imposition of western-style decision-making disrupted tradtional law ways in post-colonial society.

• 

  Prison Visiting Policies and Practices [paper]

  Schafer E. N/A

  Based on empirical evidence that visiting is significantly related to parole success, several authorities have encouraged correctional institutions to maximize visiting opportunities. Previous studies have noted geographical and architectural limits to such maximization. A decade of prison construction should have improved visiting opportunities. This paper reports the results of a national survey of visiting policies and draws comparisons with surveys reported in 1978 and 1954.

• 

  The Aborigine in Comparative Law: Subnational Report on Alaska Natives

  Stephen Conn

  This paper describes the current state of aboriginal rights in Alaska and the impact of federal and state laws and policies on Alaska Native political and legal rights, tribal status, self-determination, and access to tribal lands. Topics covered include the legal determination of Alaska Native identity, the legal status of Alaska Native groups, Alaska Native land rights, sovereignty and self-government, subsistence, recognition of family and kinship structures, the criminal justice system in rural Alaska, customary versus formal legal process, and human rights and equality before the law.

• 

  Retribalization as a Strategy for Achievement of Group and Individual Social Security in Alaska Native Villages — with a Special Focus on Subsistence [paper]

  Stephen Conn and Steve J. Langdon

  Alaska Native groups have adopted a strategy of seeking general welfare, including social security, through retribalization — a term of dual meaning discussed in this paper. The paper aims to describe the historical developments leading to the adoption of this strategy, explain its nature and the various forms which it takes, and assess its potential for the achievement of the general welfare of Alaska Natives.