Why Alaska's NAACP and Republican Party both support criminal justice reform

Alaska's prisons are filled with people of color, many of whom aren't dangerous. They're in prison because they can't afford bail, or they had their probation revoked for drinking, or they were sentenced for low level drug and property crimes. Prison derails our lives. We lose our jobs. We may lose custody of our kids. But it's also a huge cost to the state -- one that isn't paying dividends.

The Anchorage branch of the NAACP teamed up with the Alaska Republican Party to support efforts by the state Legislature to get smart on crime. Rather than using our costly prison beds as a one-size-fits-all approach to all sorts of problems, we should reserve those prison beds for people who are dangerous, and not for everyone who we want to hold accountable for their behavior.

For many people, accountability can and should look like supervision in the community along with treatment for addiction. Accountability should be about ensuring people who were stolen from are paid back their losses and made whole again. Those who have caused harm to their communities should be held accountable by contributing back to those same communities. But this is not how our justice system works in Alaska.

Alaska spent $324 million last year on corrections. We're in a budget crisis, yet we spend $142 a day locking up people for technical violations of probation supervision. Decades of "tough on crime" rhetoric has created a system where the punishment often doesn't fit the crime. And worse, the punishment may do more harm than good. Putting small-time offenders in prison with serious violent offenders doesn't scare them straight -- it makes them more antisocial. People who we've locked up return to our communities (and almost all of them do return) with fewer pro-social connections to the community, no new skills, and a criminal record that prevents them from getting a job. This isn't just harmful to our communities; it's a bad investment of state dollars.

Two bills moving through the Legislature would improve how we spend our corrections dollars and put us on the path to more public safety, less wasteful spending, and a system that feels more like justice for both victims and offenders. Senate Bill 91 and House Bill 205 aim to divert low-level offenders from prison, safely release and supervise low-risk pretrial defendants who haven't yet been found guilty, and reinvest savings into victims' services, violence prevention programs, treatment, community supervision, and prisoner re-entry services. These are not just cost-savings bills -- they're public safety bills. They follow the justice reinvestment reforms of more than 30 other states that have reduced imprisonment while also reducing crime.

We join the Alaska Republican Party in applauding our legislative leaders who have prioritized these reforms this session. It's time to get tough, and smart, on crime in Alaska.