Alaska Justice Forum ; Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 1998)

Abstract

In the Spring 1998 issue of the Alaska Justice Forum, an assistant public defender who served from 1991 to 1994 in three jurisdictions in rural Alaska — Ketchikan, Kodiak, and Kotzebue — focuses on the situation of rural Alaska Natives to describe how several structural aspects of the criminal justice may contribute to the overrepresentation of Alaska Natives in the Alaska prison system. The second phase of a Justice Center study of racial disproportionality in juvenile referrals in Alaska looks at 33 youth who had five or more referrals, examining individual criminal histories and family backgrounds as revealed in the files, and notes noted that juveniles from rural communities sometimes received referrals for behavior that would have been handled informally in urban settings.