Urban and Rural Offender Processing Differences in Alaska

This article was contributed by Allan R. Barnes, Ph.D., SAC Director, Justice Center Statistical Analysis Unit, University of Alaska.

The Alaska Statistical Analysis Unit conducted a study employing the Offender-based Transaction Statistics (OBTS) to examine the conviction differences between the urban and rural areas of the state. This article presents preliminary findings of the study which was funded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The Alaska Attorney General initiated a ban on plea bargaining in 1975. The ban, it was argued, would have the effect of returning to the court the power which wholesale plea bargaining was said to subvert (Rubinstein and White, 1984). However, the legislature enacted a presumptive sentencing code in the early 1980's which had as a goal the further elimination of disparities in the processing of criminal offenders by reducing the discretion of judges in the imposition of sentences.

Given the ban on plea bargaining and the introduction of presumptive sentencing, it would be reasonable to assume that the criminal justice system of Alaska operated in the true spirit of "blind" justice, lacking bias and prejudice, treating everyone equally without respect to race, socioeconomic status or geographic location. The current project examined that aspect of the criminal justice system by comparing the sentences imposed in the urban and rural areas of the state.

The urban areas are about 85 percent white, while the rural areas are 35 percent native. The Alaska Natives (mainly Eskimo and Athabascan) constitute only 15 percent of the general state population but make up about one-third of the prison population. Blacks are only 5 percent of the state population (mainly living in urban areas) but constitute 15 percent of the prison population. This racial disparity is not uncommon and many states with substantial native populations have prison populations which over represent these groups. In Alaska, Native crime is tied to the extremely high incidence of alcoholism, particularly in the rural areas.

Data
There are 8,996 total cases in the OBTS data base for the calendar years 1984 to 1986. Of these, 7,312 were identified as either "urban" or "rural" and included in the discussion below. Each of these cases involves an arrest for a felony offense on or after January 1, 1984 and disposed either by the state prosecutor or Superior Court. Offenders arrested prior to this date but who received a formal disposition during the study period were not included, nor were those who were arrested after the beginning date but who have not yet received a formal disposition. Figure 1 describes the case processing for all cases in the 1986 only data subset, a typical year.

The term "urban" will be used to mean the cases processed in the courts of Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau and "rural" will be used for all others where the appropriate court could be identified.

Prosecution
For nearly half of all felony arrests, the state prosecutors decline prosecution. The percentage of "nolle prosequi" is higher in the rural areas, but only by a few percentage points. The direction of this difference is maintained for individual crime categories. The majority of the remaining cases are prosecuted as felonies but there is a greater chance that the case will be prosecuted as a misdemeanor in the rural areas, perhaps reflecting rural police practices and training as much as the prosecutor's willingness to prosecute. The grand jury "no true bill" is a very small part of the pretrial dispositions, usually less than two percent of all cases. It should be noted that the case screening function falls to the prosecutor in Alaska as a matter of practice. In other states the court may exercise this function or at least share in the decision on which cases are carried to the court.

Court Disposition
It is not surprising that a large proportion of all cases end with a conviction (51.2 percent and 47.8 percent for urban and rural areas respectively). Nearly 95% of both urban and rural cases which are carried to court are so disposed. There is very little difference between the two areas for the "acquitted" and "dismissed" dispositions.

Sentence
Overall, it appears that there is a slightly greater chance of receiving an incarceration or "prison" type sentence in the rural courts. Figure 2 illustrates this for felony convictions in which the urban area courts are less likely to incarcerate and more likely to fine or place on probation. There appears to be little difference between the two types of locations when the person was arrested for a felony but eventually convicted of a misdemeanor (see Figure 3). While there were twice as many felony convictions in the urban courts, there is almost an equal number of misdemeanor convictions in each type of court. One potential explanation for this difference in felony sentencing is that there may be fewer alternatives to incarceration in the rural areas, i.e. lack of counseling and treatment services. Also, the subsistence lifestyle of many rural residents makes the imposition of fines problematic.

Sentence length comparisons for one conviction for various offenses are presented in Table 1. Only cases which involved a single felony count or charge and an incarceration sentence type are included in this table to improve comparability. For some offenses the number of cases is extremely small, i.e., kidnapping (2 cases) which makes comparisons tenuous. However, when both the urban and rural number of cases exceeds 10, the mean sentence lengths are highly similar except for homicide and rape. For these latter two offense groups, the average rural sentence length is shorter. The two year difference for rape offenses may be due, in part, to the unique culture and circumstances in the rural areas. All degrees of homicide and manslaughter must be grouped in the same NCIC offense code. Thus, the observed disparity may be due to differences in offense severity which OBTS is currently unable to detect.

Conclusion
Perhaps more questions have been raised with this initial OBTS analysis of sentencing practices in Alaska than have been answered. Some questions are beyond the scope of OBTS data; for example, what are the reasons for the 46.3 percent nolle prosequi rate? Why is incarceration apparently the sentence of choice, particularly in the rural areas? What factors are the main contributors to the differences in sentence lengths for what appear to be the same offenses? Some questions which involve the offender's race, sex, type of counsel, or pretrial status are currently unanswerable given the levels of missing or unavailable data. Other questions will no doubt benefit from more focused analyses.

Some general features of offender processing seem clear: slightly less than 50 percent of all felony arrests are not prosecuted; the grand jury rarely fails to indict offenders; nearly all prosecuted offenders are eventually convicted and sentenced to some form of incarceration; one-half of all felony prison sentences are for three years or less; and one-half of all cases which are carried forward are disposed by the court in less than 158 days. These findings indicate that Alaska is not all that much different from other states, except perhaps in the area of incarceration. The geographical factor introduced here appears to have some affect on sentencing despite all that has been done to ensure impartiality. The specific state statutes, a planned addition to the Alaska OBTS data, should enable a more detailed analysis of this issue.

References
Barnes, A. R., "Disparities between felony charges at time of arrest and those at time of prosecution: 1984 Alaska OBTS Analysis:, Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Unit, Justice Center, University of Alaska Anchorage, 1988.