Based on empirical evidence that visiting is significantly related to parole success, several authorities have encouraged correctional institutions to maximize visiting opportunities. Previous studies have noted geographical and architectural limits to such maximization. A decade of prison construction should have improved visiting opportunities. This paper reports the results of a national survey of visiting policies and draws comparisons with surveys reported in 1978 and 1954.

Prison discipline received considerable attention from both the courts and professional organizations during the decade of the 1970s. It was widely assumed that the due process requirements which resulted from judicial review coupled with the promulgation of model discipline standards and procedures would limit the broad discretionary authority found in the traditional prison disciplinary process. A case study of the activities of one prison discipline committee suggests that these external pressures have had less impact on decision-making than such internal pressures as overcrowding. Due process requirements have not greatly inhibited the exercise of discretion in the prison discipline process.

A survey of Alaska corrections personnel reveals that employees in all classifications tend to have more than the minimum education or experience required for their positions. More than 75 percent of college-educated corrections personnel earned degrees and more than 40 percent acquired their experience outside Alaska. The advantages and disadvantages of hiring large numbers of employees whose education and experience were gained elsewhere are discussed in the context of the unique problems of correctional service delivery in so large and diverse a state.

Federal policy governing indigenous peoples in Canada has been marked by repeated glances south and west (at Alaska) as it has been formed through parliamentary edict, case law and Constitutional entrenchment. Although rooted in a common Crown policy, the discrete history of Canadian policy has diverged from American practice even as the country's historical and its political development have diverged. Unlike United States policy, the underpinnings of Canadian Indian law as it related to aboriginal title land rights and the limits and potential of tribal sovereignty are only now coming into focus. This belated articulation of Indian rights parallels similar developments in Alaska where land rights and tribal rights are only now being defined. In both Alaska and Canada, hunting and fishing rights and tribal governance are political and legal matters whose impact on resource development and control by provinces and states make neat application of older Indian law concepts less predictable. Cases in either place offer guidance to federal courts in either country within a modern debate over public land rights. The author suggests that attorneys in each place monitor case law and legislation only now emerging.

Law journals, newspapers, and the courts all document Native unrest and dissatisfaction with state management of Native subsistence lifestyles. It is the thesis of this paper that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) requires the state to discover and incorporate community-derived tribal law — customs and traditions regarding the taking and gathering of wild, renewable resources — as the applicable minimum federal standard to the extent that conservation of the resource permits.

This paper explores the special problems that specialists in federal Indian law in the United States face when they attempt to understand the legal position of indigenous peoples in Canada, make comparisons and offer assistance and advice. Although the roots of Canadian Indian law in British Crown policy are similar to those of the United States, the evolution of United States and Canadian Indian law occurred in patterns which were as distinctly different as has been the evolution of each country. Although some comparisons can be made between the two patterns of legal development, especially in the realm of policy changes directed at indigenous populations, the core of each legal relationship is very different, especially as it relates to federalism, the constitutional process and role of the courts, and public land issues. Therefore, while models of Indian legal achievements in one country are often used to induce governmental change in the other, especially in Alaska among the United States and in Canada, generally, advocates and United States specialists must exercise extreme caution to avoid legal culture blindness based on a lack of appreciation of the very different historical development of each nation.

Multi-ethnic (or bicultural) legal education is a superior way to teach law as a social process within an everchanging American legal culture. By stepping out of one's own legal tradition or culture and into another's, it is possible to see how law really operates without blinders of ethnocentricity. Ethnic minority students can use their own legal tradition as a basis for contrast and comparison with American legal culture. Elementary school is the best place to explore the values which underlie legal traditions. Teachers must discover differences and refrain from indoctrination. Curriculum that is bicultural should focus upon common problems, borne out of relationships, and common approaches to problem solving. A team approach in curriculum development has produced instructional material which treats common problems comparatively where more than one legal tradition operates.

Diverse groups — e.g., Brazilian squatters, Navajos, village Eskimos and Indians — look to special forums to resolve disputes outside the formal legal system. These forums are employed because they accept disputes as defined by their clients and offer remedies based upon these conceptualizations. Formal agents of the law in their environments cannot do this. When these forums are extralegal (without formal legal authority to act) and are located in an environment where the formal legal process has the theoretical capacity to intervene in the disputes, they must tap into authentic lines of power to maintain their credibility with their constituents. Legal power is not usually formally delegated without defined limits upon its use. Because extralegal forums often must be free from the constraints of particular norms and processes, in order to correctly define and remedy disputes, extralegal forums seek borrowed power through special relationships with formal agents of legal power. Then they reapply it to meet the needs of their constituents. This paper describes the ways to study these relationships and their likely impact upon an informal forum. The author suggests a way of viewing extralegal dispute resolution in a given community against the larger matrix of relationships between the formal and informal legal process. He draws upon his field work in Brazilian squatter colonies, Navajo Indian communities, and rural Athabascan and Eskimo villages in Alaska.

This paper presents observations of the Soviet system of justice, including the courts, the procuracy (described as a combination of a prosecutor or district attorney and a police investigator), criminal trials, sentencing, and corrections. The paper is based upon a three-week visit by the author to the USSR as one of 24 American participants in a criminal justice study program. In all, just over three weeks were spent in the Soviet Union including lengthy visits in Leningrad, Moscow, and Tallin (then-capital of Soviet Estonia). The opportunity of first hand observation and direct interaction with Soviet policy and law makers and Soviet academicians has done much toward destroying myths about Soviet justice practices.

Selection practices in law enforcement have been said to be one of the most complex facets of personnel management. In an effort to document the state of this complexity internationally, the study presented provides state of the art information about police personnel practices in the USA and Canada.