{"id":11081,"date":"2016-04-09T22:19:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T05:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/senate-reshapes-alaskas-criminal-landscape\/"},"modified":"2016-04-09T22:19:15","modified_gmt":"2016-04-10T05:19:15","slug":"senate-reshapes-alaskas-criminal-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/senate-reshapes-alaskas-criminal-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate reshapes Alaska\u2019s criminal landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clarification:<\/strong> A story in Saturday\u2019s Web edition of the Empire stated that AWARE of Juneau supports Senate Bill 91, criminal sentencing reform. AWARE executive director Saralyn Tabachnick said the organization supports funding for reinvestment within the bill but has not taken a position on the bill as a whole.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a landmark 16-2 vote, the Alaska Senate has approved one of the most sweeping changes to the 49th state\u2019s criminal sentencing structure since statehood.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 91, which now goes to the House for final approval in the dwindling days of the 29th Legislature, represents an abandonment of tough-on-crime programs that called for increasing jail sentences as a deterrent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>I think you can call this a little bit of a paradigm shift, if that\u2019s what you want to call it,\u201d said the bill\u2019s lead sponsor Sen. John Coghill, R-North Pole, as lawmakers prepared to vote. \u201cThat means a lot of things are going to change.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The overall goal of the bill is to reduce the number of people who return to prison after being jailed for the first time. According to statistics gathered by the state and the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission, two-thirds of Alaskans jailed for a crime will end up in jail again on another offense.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing obviously is not working,\u201d said Sen. Peter Micciche, R-Soldotna. \u201cWe\u2019ve put obstacles in the way of lower-level offenders succeeding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1980s and 1990s, tough-on-crime policies focused on increasing sentences for minor crimes as a deterrent measure, but that approach hasn\u2019t worked, lawmakers said Saturday.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, what we\u2019ve done is placed lower-level criminals into the system where they become better criminals,\u201d Micchiche said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, longer sentences have meant Alaska\u2019s prison population has ballooned. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlaska\u2019s prison population has grown by 27 percent in the last decade,\u201d the Alaska Criminal Justice Commission declared in a December report recommending changes to the state\u2019s justice system.<\/span><\/p>\n

Without changes, the commission said, the state will run out of space in its existing prisons as soon as 2017. Building a new prison would require hundreds of millions of dollars. The Goose Creek prison opened in 2012 at a cost of $240 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Facing a growing prison population \u2014 and a growing expense to care for it \u2014 the Legislature created the bipartisan justice commission in 2014 to recommend a plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

The commission created a 21-point plan that was released in December. The Alaska Legislature, led by Coghill \u2014 who sat on the commission \u2014 turned the plan into Senate Bill 91.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTwo-thirds of the people going out of our jails are going right back in, and within a short time,\u201d Coghill said. \u201cWe asked the commission to look at what we\u2019re doing, what can we do differently, how can we change the paradigm in Alaska\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In broad strokes, the 111-page bill reduces penalties for lesser offenses and encourages nonviolent offenders to be released on bail. Instead of setting bail amounts simply in accordance to the degree of the felony or misdemeanor, the state will take into consideration whether a crime is violent, how much money a person has, and whether they\u2019re likely to appear in court if released.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe main aim is to make Alaska a safer place. I think this bill gets there,\u201d Coghill said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coghill is a Republican and the Majority Leader of the Senate, but on Saturday, he garnered support from the Democratic Senate Minority when it came time to vote on Senate Bill 91.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s historic and potentially game-changing legislation,\u201d said Sen. Johnny Ellis, D-Anchorage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sen. Dennis Egan, D-Juneau, was among the votes for the bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some people sitting in jail for a long, long, long time just because of a misdemeanor, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s right,\u201d he said. \u201cFor Juneau and Southeast, Lemon Creek is in pretty good shape, but we\u2019re overcrowded even at Lemon Creek.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While SB91 received widespread acclaim, it didn\u2019t garner universal support. Two Republicans, Sen. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak, and Sen. Charlie Huggins, R-Wasilla, voted against it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each man said he felt it came down a little too much on the side of leniency for criminals and not enough on the side of protections for victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m the guy who is raining on the parade,\u201d Stoltze said after suggesting a handful of amendments on the Senate floor.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the two adopted makes possession of GHB, a commonly used date-rape drug, a felony. The other lowers the threshold for felony credit card theft to $50 from $2,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

While victims\u2019 rights organizations (including Juneau\u2019s AWARE and the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault) have come out in support of the bill, Stoltze cited a letter from eight organizations opposed to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coghill said he read the letter, and though the eight said they were concerned, \u201cthey couldn\u2019t come up with any specific recommendations. \u2026 I think they feel jail is the only option that is reasonable to them. I think it\u2019s more fear than it is fundamentals.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Micciche, at the end of a press conference following the vote, reminded his audience that the Senate\u2019s vote isn\u2019t the final word on the legislation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bill now goes to the House, where the House Judiciary Committee had scheduled a meeting Sunday to consider it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the end, although it is a paradigm shift,\u201d Micciche said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarification: A story in Saturday\u2019s Web edition of the Empire stated that AWARE of Juneau supports Senate Bill 91, criminal sentencing reform. AWARE executive director Saralyn Tabachnick said the organization supports funding for reinvestment within the bill but has not taken a position on the bill as a whole. In a landmark 16-2 vote, the Alaska […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11081"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}