More than a quarter of people in Alaska’s prisons have not yet been convicted of a crime, according to a non-profit’s report on Alaska’s prison population.
The study of Alaska’s prisons was put together by the non-profit Pew Charitable Trusts’ Justice Reinvestment Initiative as part of a new partnership with the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission. It was presented to the commission on Thursday.
The number of people awaiting trial in Alaska’s prison increased by 81 percent over the last decade, Pew researcher Rachel Brushett told the commission. That’s larger than the growth of the sentenced prisoners, up 14 percent, and probation violators, up 15 percent, over the same period.
Terry Schuster, a senior researcher with the initiative, explained the overall process for proposing reforms and refocusing the state’s criminal justice system.
“The idea being you pass measures to focus your prison beds on serious violent offenders and then reinvest some portion of the savings into these types of practices that work to reduce recidivism,” he said. “You get better public safety outcomes for the money that you’re spending. … It’s a return on investment approach to criminal justice.”
The proposal will be forwarded to the Alaska Legislature for consideration next session and already has buy-in from many involved parties.
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