Alaska Justice Forum ; Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1991)

Abstract

The Summer 1991 issue of the Alaska Justice Forum presents data from a study of crime in five unnamed Athabascan villages in central Alaska from 1985 through 1990; extracts from Village Public Safety Officer and Alaska State Trooper reports provide concrete details of individual incidents and a sense of context. The Offender-Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS) program of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which tracks adult offenders from the point of entry into the criminal justice system through final disposition; OBTS data from eight U.S. states, including Alaska, indicate that for every 100 persons arrested for a felony in 1988, 81 were prosecuted, 59 were convicted, 39 were sentenced to incarceration, and 10 were committed to a state prison, usually for more than a year. Key provisions of the federal Violent Crime Control Act of 1991, awaiting final passage, are described.