State & Local

After Reforming Criminal Justice, Alaska Has Second Thoughts

Governing: By now, the narrative surrounding state criminal justice reform is pretty familiar: A surprising coalition of conservatives and liberals, concerned respectively about the fiscal and social costs of mass incarceration, decides it’s time to move away from the “tough on crime” policies of the 1990s. They reduce some nonviolent crimes to misdemeanors, offer new alternatives to harsh sentencing and offer more rehabilitation and job training to help ex-offenders keep from committing new crimes. Over a few years, the incarceration rate in a reformed state comes down substantially, but crime rates don’t increase.

For the most part, the narrative is accurate. But things haven’t played out that way in Alaska. Following years of study, including a high-level commission and testimony from legislators and reformers in other states, Alaska enacted a law known as Senate Bill 91 in 2016 to revamp sentencing and other criminal justice policies. Within a few months, a majority of legislators decided they’d taken a wrong turn. A vote to repeal the law failed last year, but the legislature did succeed in rolling back many of the law’s provisions and ramped up penalties for minor felonies.

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