The Fall 2012/Winter 2013 issue of the
Alaska Justice Forum features articles on an integrated approach to mediation, Alaska correctional populations and trends in 2011, U.S. correctional populations in 2011, and a progress update on the Alaska Prisoner Reentry Task Force and the
Alaska Five-Year Prisoner Reentry Strategic Plan.
Articles:
Mediation has become a competition among brands vying for
distinction based more on market concerns than genuine difference. This
is not a positive development for a professional field of endeavor.
Mediation has much more to offer than competing claims of superiority
that attempt to deride and disparage the competition. This article,
which is written from a sociological viewpoint, challenges these claims
and suggests that the mediation community should develop instead a
broader integrated approach to mediation that is pragmatic, flexible,
open-source, and based on a robust theoretical foundation.
This article provides a description of Alaska correctional
populations in 2011 based upon the Alaska Department of Corrections 2011
offender profile. At the end of 2011, there was a total of 5,727
offenders in prisons, jails, community residential centers, treatment
centers, or offsite monitoring programs, and an additonal 5,951
offenders on probation or parole.
An aging offender population, a change in the proportion of
offenders sentenced for violent versus non-violent crimes, an increase
in offenders in community residential caenters and offiste programs, and
an increase in average length of stay for felony and misdemeanor
convictions are among the trends in Alaska offender demographics as
described in the Alaska Department of Corrections 2011 offender profile.
At year-end 2011, 1,504,150 offenders were incarcerated in the U.S.
under federal or state jurisdiction, and an additional 735,601
individuals were in custody under local jurisdiction, for a total of
2,239,751 incarcerated individuals in the U.S., according to the Bureau
of Justice Statistics (BJS). The U.S. corrections population in 2011
declined for the third consecutive year, but the U.S. continues to lead
all other nations in both the rate of incarceration and the actual
number of incarcerated persons.
The Alaska Prisoner Reentry Task Force, a sub-committee of the
Criminal Justice Working Group (CJWG), focuses on promoting the goal
that individuals released from incarceration do not return to custody.
This article presents an update on progress on the The Alaska Five-Year
Prisoner Reentry Strategic Plan, 2011–2016, which was released by Task
Force in February 2011.
Charlotte Titus has joined the Justice Center staff as office manager.
