Public Safety and Policing in Alaska Native Villages: Component Three of Alaska Public Safety Project

Abstract

One hundred and seventy-five residents in 28 predominately Alaska Native communities throughout the state were interviewed on-site to obtain information for assessing and improving public safety operations and services in rural villages of Alaska. Throughout the communities surveyed, state justice system personnel were viewed as being unconcerned about local governance arrangements, practices, and problems, and insensitive to values, feelings, and priorities of village residents and officials. Many villages surveyed were found to have established, without support from the Alaska justice system, their own policies and methods for dealing with crime and social control problems. Despite the importance of these extralegal local practices to villages, in general they seem to be unrecognized or ignored by justice system employees serving in the communities.