To fight rising prison costs, Alaska must reform
It’s time for Alaskans to take a hard look at the state’s prison system and who inhabits it.
Next fiscal year, the state of Alaska will spend $326 million on the Alaska Department of Corrections. According to figures from the department, there were 5,267 Alaskans in prison on July 1, 2014, the first day of the current fiscal year. The exact number of Alaskans in prison will fluctuate from day to day as prisoners are released and admitted, but do the math, and it works out to nearly $62,000 per inmate bed per year.
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On Thursday, the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska made a big announcement. You might have missed it — it’s been a big week in the news.
In short, the Central Council said that because FedEx supports the Washington professional football team — and because the Central Council believes that team’s name is derogatory and racist — it will now take its business elsewhere.
“This isn’t anti-FedEx. We are exercising our strength financially,” Tribal President Richard Peterson said in an interview with the Empire’s Melissa Griffiths. “If you actively support entities, in this case specifically a sports franchise that has a mascot and name derogatory to our people, we’re going to spend our dollars elsewhere — that’s us voting with our dollars.”
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