Republican members of an Alaska legislative committee on Tuesday abruptly voted to cancel a presentation about a jump in the number of inmate deaths in state custody, that included proposals for solutions. The refusal comes after a spike in the number of Alaskans that have died in the state’s carceral system. Last year, a record of 18 people died in custody, the Alaska Beacon reports. This year the ACLU of Alaska alleges 13 have died, though the state has accounted for only 10 of them. The talk prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska and former Department of Corrections Commissioner Dean Williams. The objection to the discussion hinged on a rule that legislative bodies should not discuss matters under adjudication; the state is the defendant in a wrongful death lawsuit.
Megan Edge, director of ACLU Alaska’s Prison Project, which monitors the state’s criminal legal system, said she was disappointed that lawmakers turned down an opportunity to start solving the problem of increased inmate deaths in the state. “We have 5,000 Alaskans sitting in our jails and the fact that they’re not willing to hear this says a lot about how little they care about people in prison,” she said. “The people that are dying are predominantly pretrial, very young and Alaska Native.” Williams was slated to weigh in on how to address the recent uptick in inmate deaths — an issue he faced as head of the Corrections Department in 2016. “If the rule was you could never talk about anything in litigation or address anything in litigation you would never get to talk about anything in this building,” he said.
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