A Publication of the Justice Center<

Vol. 8, No. 4

Note: Physical copies of this issue of the Alaska Justice Forum were mistakenly labeled Spring instead of Winter 1992.

Trostle, Lawrence C.; McShea, Darren; and Perras, Russell. (Winter 1992). "The Nonenforcement Role of the VPSO." Alaska Justice Forum 8(4): 1, 9-12. The Village Public Safety Officer (VPSO) program provides state funding for Alaska Native villages to hire their own public safety officers, who assist the Alaska State Troopers in handling public safety related problems. This article presents data on enforcement vs. nonenforcement activities of Village Public Safety Officers (VPSOs) from thirteen villages in the Bristol Bay region. The data indicate that VPSOs engage in a wide variety of public safety activities, many of which cannot be defined strictly as law enforcement activities.

Schafer, N. E. and Tubbs, Michael P. (Winter 1992). "Alaska Community Corrections Residents." Alaska Justice Forum 8(4): 4-7. The Cordova Center is a 90-bed community corrections facility in Anchorage administered by Allvest, Inc. It opened in 1986 as a traditional reintegration facility, and by mid-1991 served multiple clienteles including misdemeanants, probationers, and parolees. By mid-1991, more than 3500 people had been in residence in Cordova Center, the majority of them for short periods. This article presents findings of a study of Cordova Center residents other than detained misdemeanants who had ended their center residency between January 1989 and July 1991.

Rieger, Lisa. (Winter 1992). "Sentencing Commission Releases Second Annual Report." Alaska Justice Forum 8(4): 8-9. The Alaska Sentencing Commission was created by an act of the Alaska Legislature to evaluate the effect of sentencing laws and practices on Alaska's criminal justice system and to recommend improvements in criminal sentencing practices. This article discusses the commmission's first year of work as described in its 1991 annual report to the legislature.

Bureau of Justice Statistics. (Winter 1992). "School Crime: A BJS Report." Alaska Justice Forum 8(4): 2-3. An estimated 9 percent of students, age 12 to 19, were crime victims in or around their school over a six-month period, according to a nationally representative sample survey of more than 10,000 youth conducted in 1989. Based on the BJS report "School Crime: A National Crime Victimization Survey," NCJ-131645.