Alaska needs to get real on rural justice

It’s no secret Alaska has massive issues with public safety and law enforcement in some of its most remote communities. It’s not even a secret that our state has a two-tiered justice system. There’s the one on the road system, where there are ample quantities of municipal police, Alaska State Troopers, courts and jails. And there’s the other, largely in smaller communities mostly reachable by air or boat. In those places, law enforcement is scant to nonexistent. Courts are a plane flight away. Sometimes officers are, too. Jails, insofar as they exist, are makeshift facilities all too vulnerable to vandalism, arson, neglect and forces of nature.

One would have to be willfully blind to look at our system and not recognize that high crime rates aren’t just a risk given our two disparate justice systems — they’re an inevitability. And yet the state, while not turning a blind eye, isn’t treating the problem with the urgency that a public safety emergency demands. It’s time to change that.

The Village Public Safety Officer program, meant to help fill the law enforcement gap in communities large enough to require a police presence but without an economic base to reliably fund one, has been in a downward spiral for years, and the state is doing less to fix that than it is pointing fingers at who or what is to blame. Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration has cut funds from the program, saying that funding is well in excess of expenditures because villages can’t recruit enough officers to fill positions. But the state is also rejecting the vast majority of VPSO funding requests for recruitment, based on the paradoxical logic that there aren’t enough filled positions to justify spending more money. It’s a Catch-22, with villages on the losing end.

Certainly, the VPSO program has never been a perfect — or even, in many places, adequate — solution. But the state, while seemingly moving to diminish the VPSO program while hiring more Alaska State Troopers who serve mostly communities on the road system, is doing little to provide alternative law enforcement. And although troopers do good work, they can’t be considered an effective law enforcement presence in communities where they’re not physically present. If the state plans to abandon the VPSO program, whether in word or in deed, it must stand up a law enforcement presence to replace it. Perhaps a fresh take is needed if the current system is no longer effective. Whatever the approach, the state’s primary duty is to provide for public safety and the administration of justice; if it cannot succeed in that service, no others will be enough to make up for it.

Fortunately for Alaska, some funds are en route to help fill the urgent need for justice in rural communities: U.S. Attorney General William Barr declared a public safety emergency during his visit to Alaska in June. That order provided for $6 million in funding to the state to improve public safety infrastructure such as holding facilities and office space for law enforcement officers, as well as $4.5 million to Alaska Native organizations to help support 20 officer positions. But this one-time shot in the arm shouldn’t be considered a complete solution. And we can’t count on the federal government to bail us out whenever we’re failing to address our own problems adequately.

State government isn’t entirely treading water in addressing VPSO issues: The Department of Public Safety has made adjustments to training schedules to reduce conflicts with recruits’ subsistence hunting needs, and the Legislature has set up a task force to identify problems with the VPSO program and recommend fixes for them. But Alaskans are well aware of the tendency for piecemeal solutions to miss the mark in addressing greater problems, and of the danger that blue-ribbon panels will return vague suggestions too general to be of practical use. Department of Public Safety leadership and legislators should recognize those pitfalls and avoid them.

What Alaska needs now is a specific, actionable plan to improve public safety in rural communities. That doesn’t mean spending more money for the sake of doing so, but it does mean not shying away from good options just because they cost more than the present system — underinvestment, after all, is a major factor in the growth and perpetuation of this problem. Gov. Dunleavy and his administration have recognized some areas, such as mental health services, where the pressing need to do better has outweighed the priority of cutting the budget. This is another area that demands the same approach.

It may be impractical, even impossible, to completely eradicate the differences in law enforcement and criminal justice that exist between Alaska’s major cities and its communities off the road system. But it’s not too much to ask that all Alaskans should be kept safe and receive equal justice under the law — no matter where they are.

Correction: A previous version of this editorial stated that the $6 million federal grant to the state would help recruit, hire and equip village police. According to the Department of Public Safety, the funds will be used “to improve public safety infrastructure like holding facilities and office space for peace officers.”