Bush Justice: A Critical Report

Major Conclusions

     There were three major conclusions arising from this study.
     One, that Bush villages and village residents are not receiving the basic minimum protection that citizens of this country and state should reasonably expect. This is a condition seen as possibly of constitutional proportions in the failure to provide equal protection.
     Second, the state does not have the basic tools needed to identify and address public safety and justice problems in the Bush villages. This is a lack of the basic data of what is happening in the villages. For all intents and purposes, the Bush remains invisible.
     Third, the Bush villages and the rural Natives are not an homogenous entity. They make up several distinct cultural groups which do require varied and particularized responses by the state.
For instance, magistrates may be highly desirable and highly effective in some regions of the state, but would not be desirable or effective in other regions where they would fragment and conflict with existing village authority structures.

Serious Public Safety Problems

     While village residents prefer their villages to the urban centers of the state, it appears, based on their self-reports and what information does exist, that there are serious public safety problems in the Bush villages.
     These villages probably have the highest per capita fire loss in the country. Interpersonal crime appears to exist at higher levels than urban areas of the state and village residents are much more likely to suffer death or injury from accident, homicide, rape, assault or suicide than urban residents.
     Yet many of these villages lack even one fire extinguisher or organized means of fighting fires.
Twenty-five per cent of the villages did not have a village police officer. In the villages which did have village police officers, less than half had not received any training under the Village Police Training Program of the Department of Public Safety. (See Alaska Justice Forum, February 1979.)
     Some village police officers often lack even the paper and forms on which they can record their activities; and more often lack more essential tools for their job.
     Such as the village officer who repeatedly pled with another agency for ammunition needed because of a serious problem with stray dogs. Ultimately a small boy was mauled and nearly killed by the dogs.
     Often these villages must rely on outside help, and that usually is not available in anything less than hours, days or even weeks.
     While many villages do have telephones, these often are inoperative. The only means for requesting help are by radio or the scheduled weekly mail plane. One village police officer told of trying for 11 hours to get help for a suicide victim who was in critical condition.
     During the course of the study several instances were discovered in which villages were terrorized by drunken men with guns. The village residents could only remain in hiding until the men finally went away or fell asleep.
     These would have been intolerable occurrences anywhere else in the country, but they went unnoticed in these villages and according to Dr. Angell they represent a failure by the state to provide basic services to these villages—a failure to provide equal protection.

Basic Information Lacking

     If the state is to address the problems in the villages, it must have the basic information, the basic data of what is happening. But the state does not even have this in any recognizable or useable form. Within the basic recordkeeping of the state the Bush remains invisible.
     While the state maintains comprehensive records of crime reports and police activities for nearly all white communities in the state, only a few police reports are recorded from Native villages and crime reports are recorded under "the rest of the state." Consequently, events in the Bush are indistinguishable from metropolitan areas such as exist outside the Anchorage police service area. ^
    Dr. Angell stated: "The problems of rural Native communities cannot be recognized, much less solved, until systematic approaches for the collecting and processing of information are instituted. This study is no substitute for such a system. It is sufficient, as a preliminary effort, for the identification of problem boundaries. But if the crime and justice situations in Native communities are to be sufficiently illuminated for problem identification, planning and policy development, continuous data reporting and processing arrangements will have to be established.
     "Due to the dearth of information about the Bush justice system... all people of the state cannot be assured of even relatively equal protection and services unless this situation is changed."

Cultural Differences

     Dr. Angell also noted what many Natives have complained about in the past, that cities like Dillingham, Bethel, Nome, Kotzebue and Barrow are essentially white commercial centers and that the Native Bush villages are as different from them as they are from the urban cities such as Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau.
     Dr. Angell also discussed in some detail the various distinct cultural groups in Alaska. Each has its own means of social control which create differing problems with the superimposition of Anglo-American criminal justice processes upon them.
     It is a situation which does require differing responses by the state in different parts of the state.
     To further compound the problem, Dr. Angell also noted that some Native groups have developed a hybred [sic] system blending their traditional means of social control with that of the Anglo-American system.
     An example cited was the traditional practice of banishment which has been carried forward by using the criminal justice system as the agent for banishment.
     In a subsistence environment community members are often interdependent and disruptive behaviour threatens the existence of the community. Banishment is a serious decision and is undertaken only in the most serious situations or when the person has repeatedly caused
problems. In the past the U.S. Marshal's Service and the Alaska State Troopers have served as banishment agents.
     But, now when a village has decided to banish a person, he is removed by the Trooper because of a serious offense; but he returns on the next flight, freed by the court on his own recognizance.
     What the village saw as the end of a process, was the beginning of the process for the state.
     It is a situation which creates confusion about the criminal justice system and about what a village can do. It is a situation which Dr. Angell said must be recognized and addressed by the state.
     But the village residents interviewed during the course of the study were interested in learning about the state's criminal justice system.
     They were generally desirous of having representatives of the criminal justice agencies visiting the villages so that village members could learn from them about the criminal justice system and so these representatives would better understand the villages and their traditions and problems.

Recommendations

     These conclusions and the findings made during the course of the study were the basis for a series of recommendations contained in the study:
     1. State agencies must establish data collection and processing arrangements that will ensure that public safety and justice problems in rural areas are identified and that the general public is aware of these problems and understands their seriousness and implications.
     2. The Criminal Justice Planning Agency and the Office of Telecommunications should initiate efforts to improve the emergency communications systems between the villages and agencies such as the Alaska State Troopers who must respond to any emergency.
     3. State agencies should reorganized and restructure their procedures and methods to provide better social and public safety services to Bush villages.
     4. The Department of Public Safety should provide increased staff support and increased equipment and material support to the Bush villages.
     5. The Alaska Court System and the Division of Corrections should establish procedures to ensure that village police officers and village officials are informed of the disposition of cases involving village residents and of any conditions imposed on individuals returning to the villages.
     6. The Correctional Master Plan project should place particular effort on evaluating the temporary detention and offender correction situation in Bush villages, and the final plan should address these conditions.
     7. The Department of Law and other law administering agencies should establish a cooperative effort to provide educational services to the villages and assist in drafting village ordinances, and prepare a manual for the villages containing the Alaska and federal constitutions and pertinent state statutes.
     8. The criminal justice agencies of the state should increase their affirmative action efforts to employ increased numbers of Natives, and insure that Alaska Natives are placed in professional and policy level positions to improve the ability of these organizations to respond to the needs of their clients.
     9. The criminal justice agencies should provide training for their employees to give them a better understanding of Native cultures, traditions and problems; and ensure that employees assigned to Bush areas are introduced to the villages they will be serving prior to the assumption of their responsibilities.
     10. The criminal justice agencies should conduct an assessment of their social control methods in the various regions of the state to identify any conflict that may exist between their operating procedures and the social control practices of the residents. An attempt should then be made to resolve these conflicts where appropriate.
     11. The Criminal Justice Planning Agency in cooperation with the Department of Community and Regional Affairs and the Native Regional Corporations should establish regional guidance committees for justice planning.
     12. The state criminal justice agencies should provide for operative policy differentials that are appropriate for the various regions of the state.

[continued in May 1979 issue]