Each year, several thousand people are released from incarceration and return to Anchorage after completing their sentence. Many more encounter barriers and collateral consequences stemming from justice-system involvement, including those that negatively affect access to housing. The lack of articulation or the seeming unawareness surrounding the intersectionality of these issues among municipality leadership in the context of the current homelessness response should concern the community.
With the closing of the Sullivan Arena and the sudden reduction in shelter bed capacity, I’ve been left pondering what municipality leadership thinks about the potential public safety implications. More specifically, does leadership have any clue what impact it could have for those who are releasing from incarceration? Although there are staff located around the state and local programs that both strive to place people into transitional housing programs, treatment programs, and offer prisoner reentry-centric services starting Day 1, homeless shelter beds in Anchorage inevitably are part of the housing safety-net for at least a small number of people released from incarceration on an on-going basis.
Incarceration is a function of the state; therefore, it would be incumbent upon state and local stakeholders to cross that invisible line that demarcates these two bureaucracies. Given the perpetual in-fighting among municipal leadership it makes it hard to imagine that clear communication and collaboration has mystically coalesced between the state of Alaska and the municipality surrounding the issue of prisoner reentry and housing. But were it to happen, it might reveal a sliver of common ground at that nexus point of housing, reentry and public safety from which to build upon.
— Jonathan Pistotnik
Coordinator, Anchorage Reentry Coalition
Anchorage
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