Geographic Realities In Alaska

If you take a map of Alaska and superimpose it on a map of the lower 48 states you will see that it stretches from Seattle to Florida. Imagine working for a Department of Corrections where the completion of a home call may necessitate 3 days in the field. Imagine your officer in Chicago setting out to make home visits in Texas and you get an idea of the immensity of the challenges facing parole and probation officers in our 49^th state.

The Alaskan Airlines plane suddenly aborted it’s descent into the Juneau airport and began circling the harbor below us. Eventually the captain announced that there had been an earthquake with a 7.2 magnitude just as we were preparing to land. He reassured us that the ground crews were merely doing a routine check of the landing strip for cracks or other damage. Meanwhile I was sitting at 10,000 feet wondering exactly how much fuel was left if we had to land elsewhere. As a shaft of sun ricocheted off the Mendenhoff Glacier at the edge of Gastineau Channel we received the ‘all clear’ signal for our second landing attempt.

Betty Tangeman, District Supervisor, had arranged for training in Juneau, the state capitol. In a particularly Alaskan twist, she had invited the whole community to a presentation about the Reality Model. That evening the audience included law enforcement, offenders, and their friends and wives. Juneau is a small, tight knit, place with 40 miles of paved roads and 265 miles of hiking trails. The only way in or out was by sea or by air. The audience seemed comfortable with each other and I reflected on the amazing job the Alaska Department of Corrections had done with integrating programs for offenders into the local community. Perhaps it was a function of the isolation but, nevertheless, the Probation people and the Juneau Police Department had an exemplary working relationship.

Over dinner that evening, Ms. Tangeman and Richard Siverly, a local mental health counselor, described another aspect of supervision, Alaska style. A ‘video supervision program’ allows offenders in the communities of Haines, Yakutat, and Hoonah to ‘check in’ with their probation officer via a video/TV camera linked to a telephone system hooked up in the local police departments. Similar equipment is located in the regional probation department office to allow real time video conferencing. I was starting to understand that necessity truly is the mother of invention but a bigger surprise awaited me farther north, in Anchorage.

500 miles from Juneau is Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage. Much as New York City is to the state capital in Albany, Anchorage is to Juneau. The nearby airforce base, alone, has 17,000 personnel and fully 1/3 of the state’s population lives in the greater Anchorage area. I arrived early at the Anchorage Police Academy / Corrections Training Center where the annual South-Central regional training of Parole and Probation officers was in full swing. As I sat in the back I heard Officers Keith Thayer and Kelley Sharrow conduct a very professional and thoughtful  in-service training on the ‘Village Public Safety Officer Program’.

Probation Supervision in Outlying Areas

During the 2000 legislative session Senate Bill 145 was introduced [1] to provide a statute to support informal agreements to an existing program. In outlying areas in places I’d never heard of such as Quinhaguk, Scammon Bay, Eek, Kokhanok, and Akhiok, there have been Village Public Safety Officers (VPSOs) for many years. These, historically, had been Native peoples charged with law enforcement, fire, EMT, disaster preparedness, and all other aspects of village safety. Recently, the Bristol Bay Native Corporation and the Alaska Department of Corrections had started a pilot project to train the VPSO for parole and probation supervision. Senate Bill 145 was the formalization and result of that experiment.

Imagine, if you will, a village hundreds of miles from its’ nearest neighbors. Imagine a lone VPSO, acting as an agent of a supervising probation officer, effecting an arrest, search, or drug test on one of his or her fellow villagers. I leaned forward in my chair. This was getting fascinating.

It seems that the native villages (called ‘Native Corporations’ in Alaska), the Alaska State Troopers, and the Alaska Department of Corrections had been authorized to undertake a partnership to train and utilize VPSOs to assist with parole and probation supervision in rural villages.  The legislation specifies that VPSOs may act as a supervising District PO’s agent concerning arrests, drug testing, home visits, and searches when requested to do so by the PO’s. Mr. Thayer went on to stress that only PO’s may authorize and direct a VPSO to act as their agent and perform supervision functions. Other law enforcement or VPSOs cannot act as the supervising PO’s agent without specific authorization from the Probation Officer.

Naturally, this is a logical response to the geographic reality mentioned above, but I was interested in how villages such as Yakutat, Russian Mission, Toksook Bay, and Unalakleet would handle such issues as incarceration, transportation, breathalyzers, and the mentally ill. Suddenly the reality and complexity of our profession as Community Corrections Officers was taking on new meaning. Training issues are difficult enough when working with certified line staff. What would these issues entail when working with VPSOs whose background and education varied widely?

The VPSO manual[2], in its’ section on sex offenders, for example, stresses that the village officer should be aware of  the offenders access to the victims, party lifestyle, keeping secrets, infidelity, and the bored aimless, unstructured use of leisure time. These are classic and professional responses to the very specialized world of  supervising sex offenders. How difficult if must be to perform this function when you are undoubtedly related, in some way, to the perpetrator. Remember, that as a VPSO your other functions include medical care, fire response, and tsunamis (not to mention earthquakes).

I soon learned that the Alaskan legislation authorized, and funded, the Native Corporations which allowed them to have the funds to actually hire the VPSOs. As tribal employees their performance would be reviewed by the managing entity of the region. This is taking the idea of Community Corrections to the very core of the concept.

Collaboration Driven by Geography

Although VPSOs are now authorized to add ‘agent of the PO’ to their long list of duties, they are actually supervised by the Native Corporation’s VPSO coordinator. Their training in all other areas is provided by the Alaska State Troopers but the training as ‘agent of the Pos” is provided specifically by the Alaska Department of Corrections.  It will frequently fall to the local trooper to provide necessary security in particularly risky situations. My understanding is that the State Police will also provide or arrange for any necessary offender transportation. The VPSO manual is very clear that law enforcement officers, other than the supervising PO, cannot authorize any action involving a probation case. Presumably, the local trooper would handle new law violations and the VPSO, acting as the PO’s agent, would handle any probation functions or arrests.

I had an opportunity to speak with Colleen Tafs, the assistant director for the Division of Community Services. She recognizes the thousands of scenarios that may very well play themselves out given the chain of command, sharing of supervision, and politics of hiring these community partners. But given the breathtaking distances involved in supervising offenders in Alaska, we both agreed that the effort looked like sensible legislation that much better serves the outlying communities and one that makes an honest effort to provide comparable level of services to all Alaskan citizens. She then showed me a VPSO Interview Sheet. As currently established, this sheet is to be faxed back to the supervising probation officer following any type of official contact with the offender. The wording was carefully chosen, For example, the form does not ask if a drug test was given by the VPSO. Rather, it states “ As directed by the District Probation Officer the offender was tested for drugs or alcohol.”. And, “As directed by the District Probation Officer, a search of the following was made…”[3]   Assistant Director Tafs also advised that the training for both the Probation Officers and the VPSOs fell to her department.

One of the Probation Officers took me aside during a break and described her last attempt to engage the services of a VPSO. She had an offender in an obscure fishing village that she wanted the VPSO to contact. She reached his telephone and was given the message that he had gone fishing ‘for the season’ and would be back in a month. It is important to remember that, oftentimes the VPSO employees are also pursuing a traditional cultural way of life. The Probation Officer also pointed out that, given the absence of the VPSO, she would now have to make the trip to the island. She was quick to stress, however, that in the past she would always have had to make the trip and she very much supported any attempts to get on-location assistance whenever possible.

Another aspect of the VPSO duties involve assisting the supervising Probation Officer by bringing together community services and resources to help the offender. This may include victim’s services, risk management teams, and necessary treatment. In effect, the PO is utilizing an on-site ally in structuring the conditions of supervising and enforcing compliance with these conditions. I began to think of this as a long range assistant with some rather remarkable insight into the local community.

Different Functions…Different Trainers

The aspect of training VPSOs in the scope of these expanded duties has presented a challenge to the Alaska Department of Corrections. At the most elemental level, the VPSO needs education on the scope and duties inherent in Parole and Probation supervision. The troopers, as well, are trained about the difference between their arrest authority and the authority given to the Alaskan Community Correction Officers.  What I found truly remarkable about the legislation was that it was not solely punitive. The intent was very clear that delivery of both services and sanctions were  anticipated. These would be provided under the direct authority of the PO, under the supervision of the State Police, by employees of the village corporation as determined by the local standards throughout the various communities.

During my portion of the training I made several references to my rural community. I was greeted with blank stares when I described the difficulty of making a home call over 70 miles from the Probation office. Now I understand that the audience was just being polite by not pointing out that they are frequently faced with distances ten times greater over a terrain that has yet to see any roads at all.

I tried to imagine myself in the village of Shishimaref, Stebbins, White Mountain, or Chenega Bay. A cellular phone rings and I answer it. It is the Probation Officer asking that I check on a client. I grab my reporting forms, fire up my snow mobile, and set out armed with only my training, my knowledge of the community, and my instructions from the supervising officer.  Alaska is a monumentally beautiful state populated by innovative and professional people. The Alaska Department of Corrections is proof that dedication will overcome any challenge, any time.

Carl Reddick is a Parole and Probation Officer and the editor of the Community Corrections Report.

 He can be reached at 541-265-8851 #16.