Village Public Safety Officers (VPSOs) and paraprofessional police

Justice Center|Alaska| National | International

A topical index of UAA Justice Center research, publications, and academic resources;
with selected Alaska, national, and international resources.

See also:

 

The Village Public Safety Officer (VPSO) program provides state funding for rural villages in Alaska (most of which are predominately Alaska Native) to train and hire their own public safety officers to assist the Alaska State Troopers in handling public safety and law enforcement problems. VPSOs receive six weeks' training at the Public Safety Academy in Sitka. The VPSO program involves some 90 to 100 VPSOs in village throughout the state. Some rural villages rely upon locally hired Village Police Officers (VPOs); other villages have both a VPSO and one or more VPOs, who assist the VPSO in his or her duties.

Justice Center

Recent

"A Brief Look at VPSOs and Violence Against Women Cases" (2011).

Reports

Alaska Rural Justice Issues: A Selected Bibliography by UAA Justice Center (2006).

Turnover Among Alaska Village Public Safety Officers: An Examination of the Factors Associated With Attrition by Darryl S. Wood (2000).

Turnover Among Alaska Village Public Safety Officers: An Examination of the Factors Associated with Attrition — Summary by Darryl S. Wood (2000).

Articles

Professional journals

"A Comparison of Group-Administered and Mail-Administered Surveys of Alaskan Village Public Safety Officers" by Darryl S. Wood. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management 26(2): 329-340 (2003).

"Explanations of Employment Turnover among Alaska Village Public Safety Officers" by Darryl Wood. Journal of Criminal Justice 30: 197-215 (2002).

"The Nonenforcement Role of Police in Western Alaska and the Eastern Canadian Arctic: An Analysis of Police Tasks in Remote Arctic Communities" by Darryl S. Wood and Lawrence C. Trostle. Journal of Criminal Justice 25(5): 367-379 (1997).

"Police Turnover in Isolated Communities: The Alaska Experience" by Darryl S. Wood. National Institute of Justice Journal 246: 16-23 (Jan 2001).

Alaska Justice Forum

"Alaska VPSO Program: Some Facts" (2000).

"A Brief Look at VPSOs and Violence Against Women Cases" (2011).

"Improving Public Safety in Rural Alaska: A Review of Past Studies" by Justin Roberts (2005).

"More Reading on VPSOs" (2011).

"The Nonenforcement Role of the VPSO" by Lawrence C. Trostle, Darren McShea, and Russell Perras (1992),

"Officer Turnover in the Village Public Safety Officer Program" by Darryl S. Wood (2000).

"Patterns of Reported Crime in Alaska Villages" by Otwin Marenin (1991).

"Predicting Legal Resolutions in Domestic Violence Cases" by Marny Rivera, André B. Rosay, Darryl S. Wood, and Katherine TePas (2009).

"Studies, Reports, and Documents Relevant to the VPSO Program" by Justin Roberts and UAA Justice Center (2005).

"Village Safety Officer Program" by M. James Messick (1979),

"Village Police Training" (1979).

"Village Public Safety Officers: A Further Look" by Lawrence C. Trostle (1992).

Conference papers and presentations

"Employment Turnover Among Alaska Native and Non-Native Village Public Safety Officers." by Darryl S. Wood. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Francisco, CA. Nov 2000

"Village Public Safety Officer Turnover and Violent Crime in Alaska Native Communities" by Darryl S. Wood. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western and Pacific Association of Criminal Justice Educators, Park City, UT, Oct 2003.

Projects

Alaska

Alaska state agencies

Alaska State Troopers: Village Public Safety Officer Program. Information and calendar of upcoming VPSO Academies.

Publications

"Conflicting Perspectives on the Role of the Village Public Safety Officer in Native Villages in Alaska" by Otwin Marenin. American Indian Quarterly 18(3): 297-319 (1994).

Village Justice: A History of Rural Public Safety Services in Alaska by Justin Roberts. Anchorage, AK: Alaska Federation of Natives, 2004.