Justice Center launches redesigned website

The Justice Center launched the newly redesigned "For Students" portion of its website on June 24. These pages have been redesigned in the UAA content management system (CMS), and students will find information much more easily with the improved navigation of the site. The new pages also have photos and slideshows. Visitors to the old version of these pages will be automatically redirected to the appropriate new pages.

The Research and Publications pages have also been redesigned and navigation has been enhanced. Subsidiary pages of the site are still in design transition.

Melissa Huenefeld, Academic Secretary, implemented the redesign for the new "For Students" web pages, with assistance from Melissa Green, Justice Center web manager.

Justice grad highlighted in Juneau Empire profile

Tabatha Harris, Justice 07 grad, was recently highlighted in a profile, "Former local works to improve lives of women in prison," in the Juneau Empire newspaper. Tabatha is a case manager in the Denver County Jail Women's Mental Health Transition Unit, part of the prisoner re-entry program.

In addition to her work as a case manager, Tabatha is currently in the Master's in Social Work program at Colorado State University-Brighton.

Prof. Periman teaches at "Color of Justice 2010"

Professor Deb Periman, Justice faculty member, taught three sessions for the "Color of Justice 2010 - Fostering Diversity in the Legal Profession & Judiciary" program on Thursday and Friday, June 17 and 18, 2010 at the UAA campus and the Alaska Court. About 80 high school and college students from around the state attended this event which included sessions on law and legal careers. Alaska judges and lawyers and professors from Northwest law schools taught the various sessions.

For the High School Track (freshmen and sophomores), Prof. Periman presented "Follow Your College Dream: Think About Your Future." For College and Career Track participants, she discussed "Pre-law Support Services at UAA" and "Preparing for the LSAT: Reading Comprehension and Logic."

This program is sponsored by the National Association of Women Judges with additional support from the University of Alaska Anchorage, the Alaska Court System, and other educational and community partners.

Pictured: (l to r) Prof. Deb Periman, UAA Justice Center, and Susan Lee, Gonzaga University School of Law Director of Admissions, teaching a session for the High School Track participants.

Alaska Meth Ed Project and Justice Center present substance abuse prevention display

The Alaska Meth Education Project, in collaboration with the Justice Center, presents a display and offers resources on substance abuse prevention, treatment options, and jobs in the substance abuse treatment field, on Thursday, June 24, 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. at the UAA/APU Consortium Library.

Substance abuse prevention materials will be on display June 18-28 at the UAA/APU Consortium Library as part of the recognition of International Day against Substance Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (June 26). The Alaska Meth Education Project is supported by the Municipality of Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services.

Prof. Periman appointed to Alaska Bar Association committees

Prof. Deb Periman, Justice faculty, was recently appointed to the Alaska Bar Association Historians Committee and was re-appointed to the Law Related Education Committee.

The Historians Committee sponsors continuing legal education programs that highlight significant issues in the history of Alaska's legal system. The Law Related Education Committee is responsible for presenting programs and producing publications to aid the public in understanding the law and the legal system.

Justice Center issues Fairbanks Gang Assessment Report

The Justice Center has released the "Fairbanks Gang Assessment" report which includes a review of community demographic, law enforcement, student and school, and community perceptions data. Data for this report were collected in 2010. The report was prepared with the Alaska Division of Juvenile Justice and the Fairbanks Gang Reduction and Intervention Network (GRAIN). Khristy Parker, Research Assistant; Jennifer McMullen, Research Assistant; Dr. André Rosay, Justice Center Director; and Shea Daniels, Alaska Division of Juvenile Justice are the report authors.

Prof. Periman teaches at Color of Justice 2010

Professor Deb Periman, Justice faculty member, is on the planning committee for and will be a participant in the "Color of Justice 2010 - Fostering Diversity in the Legal Profession & Judiciary" program on Thursday-Friday, June 16-18, 2010 at the UAA campus and the Alaska Court. High school and college students from around the state are invited to this event which includes sessions on law and legal careers. Alaska judges and lawyers and professors from Northwest law schools teach the various sessions.

This program is sponsored by the National Association of Women Judges with additional support from the University of Alaska Anchorage, the Alaska Court System, and other educational and community partners.

Pictured are faculty and students from the 2009 Color of Justice event. Photo by Barbara Hood, Alaska Court System.

Dr. Rosay presents at 2010 National Institute of Justice conference

Dr. André Rosay, Justice Center Director, and Katherine TePas, Alaska State Troopers Program Coordinator, will make a poster presentation on "Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships to Impact Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Policy" at the 2010 National Institute of Justice (NIJ) conference on June 15 in Washington, D.C.

The poster describes how practitioners from the Alaska Department of Public Safety and researchers from the UAA Justice Center worked together to develop Alaska's new multidisciplinary and multifaceted initiative to combat domestic violence and sex crimes in Alaska.

For more than a decade, NIJ’s annual conference has brought together criminal justice scholars, policymakers, and practitioners at the local, state, and federal levels to share the most recent findings from research and technology.

Justice Center receives funding awards

The Justice Center recently received three funding awards. Dr. Marny Rivera will be working on an evaluation of the program, Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol. This grant is from the Volunteers of America for $120,000. Dr. Sharon Chamard has received two awards from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the first for $43,000 to conduct the 2010 Mat-Su Community Survey, and the second for $4,500 to carry out a trend analysis and a derived importance-performance analysis on data from the 2006-2009 Mat-Su Community Surveys.

Dr. Myrstol invited to BJS/NIJ expert topic meeting

Dr. Brad Myrstol, Justice faculty, was invited to attend an Expert Topic Meeting sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs (OJP) on May 27, 2010 in Washington, D.C. Dr. Myrstol was one of nine panelists asked to discuss OJP’s Offender/Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program before an audience of federal law enforcement and public policy officials, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Research scientists from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA),and the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)were also in attendance.

Dr. Myrstol presented his paper, entitled “Demonstrating the Utility of ADAM’s Drug Use Calendar Data: A Group-based Trajectory Analysis of Crack Cocaine Use Among Adult Male Arrestees,” which focuses on the potential of the event history calendar methodology. Incorporating the event history calendar into the current ADAM program can provide unique and theoretically significant contributions to our present knowledge about the complex relationship between illicit drug use and criminal offending. He also made a PowerPoint presentation, "Arrestees' Drug Use Trajectories: Using the ADAM Drug Use Calendar to Model Patterns of Illicit Drug Use."

Other panel experts included representatives from the fields of social work, criminology, psychology, anthropology, statistics, law enforcement, and government and private research. The papers presented at the proceedings will be published by OJP.

Dr. Everett contributes research perspective to sentencing symposium

Dr. Ron Everett, Justice faculty, has been invited to contribute his research perspective for materials for an upcoming sentencing symposium funded by the National Science Foundation. His research on race and sentencing is recognized as influential in the field. Dr. Everett will be sharing his views on past, present, and future research on race and sentencing for an overview essay of that topic. The program, "The Past and Future of Empirical Sentencing Research," will be held September 23 -24, 2010 at the University of Albany.

Justice Center hosts Russian lawyers and law professors

A delegation of Russian lawyers and law professors was hosted by the Justice Center on May 28, 2010 at the Justice Center offices. The delegation is sponsored by the Open World Program and the Russian American Rule of Law Consortium (RAROLC). Alaska is participating under the auspices of the Khabarovsk/Alaska Rule of Law (KAROL) Partnership which has committees in Anchorage and Juneau.

At the Justice Center, Prof. Deb Periman and Dr. Sharon Chamard, Justice faculty, presented information on curriculum and the requirements of the Justice degree, and discussed pre-law and paralegal programs. Other topics included juvenile justice issues and civil and criminal law. Prof. Deb Periman held a hands-on demonstration of legal research techniques and resources in the faculty computer lab for the group. The group also toured the UAA/APU Consortium Library. While in Alaska, the delegation met with lawyers and judges, attended court proceedings, and visited justice agencies and facilities in Anchorage and Juneau.

Pictured above left to right are the Russian delegation members, members of the KAROL Partnership, and Justice faculty: Dr. Sharon Chamard and Prof. Deb Periman, Justice faculty; Judge David Mannheimer, Alaska Court of Appeals ; Anna Gladkikh, Petrozavodsk Central Bar; Prof. Andrey Goncharov, Russian Academy of Justice - Far East Branch; Tatyana Sirotina, East Siberian corporate attorney; Natalya Mikhaylovskaya, Investment Risk Advisor for Uralsib; Rich Curtner, Alaska Federal Defender; Svetlana Pakhomova, Russian Academy of Law; Grigoriy Yarygin, St. Petersburg State University, Facilitator; Vadim Bourenin, Interpreter.

Dr. Chamard interviewed by ADN about homeless camp closures

Dr. Sharon Chamard, Justice faculty, was interviewed on May 26, 2010, by the Anchorage Daily News for an article about the current Municipal Code 15.20.020 which allows police to close homeless camps with as little as 12 hours notice, and about the proposed change to allow more time for notice.

She is the author of the recently published monograph, "Homeless Encampments," for the Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Problem-Specific Guides Series. The monograph has been released as part of the series published by the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Chamard is also the president of the Fairview Community Council.