Shortly after Gov. Bill Walker signed SB 91, an extensive criminal justice reform bill, Juneau’s Law Department got to work amending city code to meet the new state law’s requirements.
“It’s a big change in the way we address lower-level misdemeanor offenders,” City Attorney Amy Mead told the Assembly during a special meeting Wednesday afternoon.
The goal of the meeting, Mead said, was to help the Assembly understand how the state’s criminal justice overhaul will impact the city. In many cases, though, SB 91 has raised more questions than Mead and her team of lawyers can answer.
SB 91 doesn’t allow municipalities to impose stricter punishments than the state for comparable offenses. Because the new law generally reduced maximum sentences for nonviolent offenders, this meant Juneau’s city code needed to be reworked.
[In Haven House ceremony, Walker signs sweeping reform of Alaska’s criminal justice system]
For instance, the city had to lower the possible term of imprisonment for misdemeanor property crimes. Any larceny, concealment of merchandise, bad checks, or theft of less than $250 will no longer carry any term of imprisonment if it’s the offenders first or second offense. A property crime of the same nature resulting in up $1,000 in damages will carry up to one year imprisonment.
The Assembly made changes to 19 sections of city code last week when it passed an ordinance amending city laws to conform with SB 91. That was the easy part though. What’s tough, at least in Mead’s view, is making sure that the city has the tools in place to prosecute crime in accordance with state law.
“There are a lot of questions yet to be answered,” Mead told the Empire after the meeting Wednesday, and those questions revolve mainly around people committing nonviolent misdemeanors.
“I guess I’m old fashioned because I think the way to keep people from doing things over and over and over again is to separate them from society,” Assembly member Debbie White said, voicing her discontent with the new state law that greatly reduced prison sentences in order to combat recidivism.
Drug addiction, according to White, is the driving force behind most property crime in Juneau, and she’s worried that as long as thieves aren’t put behind bars, larceny, theft and burglary will continue.
The point of SB 91, Mead explained, is to treat the underlying causes of crime rather than just the symptoms. If a person is stealing to support an alcohol or drug habit, an appropriate “alternative sentence” — which the new state law recommends — would be to send the that person to a substance-abuse treatment facility.
The problem with this, for Juneau anyway, is that the city doesn’t have any treatment facilities that could accommodate that kind of patient intake. Juneau’s only alcohol and drug treatment facility — Rainforest Recovery Center— is a residential program, and it is not set up to accept walk-ins or last-minute referrals, which leaves the city “in a little bit of a catch 22 at the moment,” Mead told the Assembly.
“They’re saying ‘Don’t send them to jail; that’s not going to treat the underlying problem,’ but we have very little resources to do that,” she told the Empire after the meeting.
Juneau’s lack of substance-abuse treatment facilities isn’t the city’s only problem when it comes to imposing SB 91’s alternative sentences. The city’s Law Department also has to figure out what other types of alternative sentences exist.
Take, for example, shoplifters. The state is requiring Juneau to come up with alternative sentences that will help make sure the shoplifters don’t commit the same crime again.
What those sentences should be, however, are anybody’s guess at this point. The state hasn’t provided much direction, according to Mead.
“We’re tasked with coming up with alternative sentencing options, and I, off the top of my head, don’t know what those look like,” she told the Assembly, explaining that she and her staff are currently researching different types of alternative sentences that they may soon have to impose.
Juneau and Anchorage are the only municipalities in the state that prosecute their own misdemeanors. Other city’s, like Fairbanks, let the District Attorney’s Office handle them.
Juneau and Anchorage have more control over which cases they prosecute this way, and in many cases, they can allocate more resources to the prosecution of misdemeanors than the state can, Mead said. But this means that they will also face difficulties that other cities won’t as they grapple with SB 91.
“I don’t think everything will be smoothed out for a while,” Mead said. “This is going to be an evolution.”
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
Correction: In an earlier version of this article, the Empire stated that “Any larceny, concealment of merchandise, bad checks, or theft of less than $1,000 will no longer carry any term of imprisonment if it’s the offenders first or second offense.” That’s not true. If the property is worth more than $250 but less than $1,000, the offender could face up to one year imprisonment.
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