Alaska lawmakers listen to hours of public testimony on the State’s criminal justice reform bill

“For these first timers, the evidence showed us that for many of these people having them serve a lengthy prison sentence actually had the result of making them do more crime instead of stopping crimes.” Greg Razo, chair of the state’s Criminal Justice Commission, said during a presentation to lawmakers Saturday.
He added that since the criminal justice reform the state has seen an increase in probation violation reports. “That’s almost a third increase. The actual jail-time that people are doing as a result of probation violations is actually decreasing. Which is the intended result because of the swift certain sanctions, making a person go to jail for three days, four days, ten days, is an attempt to realign them so that they get an immediate consequence instead of the way it was in the old days.”