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| Bipartisan effort to enact justice reform taps Outside help |
| By alaskapublic.org- Lori Townsend |
| Published: 09/30/2015 |
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Alaska lawmakers are grappling with an exploding prison population that has grown by 27 percent over the last decade. Since May, lawmakers have been working with the Pew Charitable Trust on Justice system reforms and have tasked a Criminal Justice Commission with bringing recommendations forward by December. The $240 million Goose Creek prison has only been in operation for three years, but today on APRN’s statewide call in program Talk of Alaska, Sen. John Coghill, R-Fairbanks, said the Department of Corrections budget last year was $327 million and DOC is running out of inmate space. “And we know that if we keep this trajectory, we’re gonna have to build a new prison. It should be on the drawing board right now, so we’re in a little bit of a time crunch on looking for the best practices. One of the reasons we invited Pew Foundation up here and it’s a bipartisan effort.” Pew has been working on justice reforms across the nation for decades. They require a bipartisan approach from all three branches of state government. Zoe Towns, the Alaska Program Manager for Pew says after years of incarceration increases, states that are reforming their criminal justice systems are seeing plateaus or decreases in their prison populations. Read More. |
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