I greatly appreciate the work being done by Jacqueline Friedman Shepherd through the ACLU of Alaska’s Prison Project, and also her recent commentary in the ADN. Shepherd’s detailed description of her work, and what she has discovered through that work, is both heartbreaking and deeply troubling and makes it clear that our state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) is failing to adequately protect many of the incarcerated Alaskans who are DOC’s responsibility. This has led to an unacceptably — and shamefully — high number of prisoner deaths while in DOC custody, including deaths for which the DOC has not accepted responsibility. Many of that department’s actions— and inactions — are alarming.
Yet state officials at the highest levels seem unwilling to address DOC’s failings. This has to change.
The evidence and accusations that Shepherd presented strongly suggest scandalous, even corrupt, behavior — and the possibility of a cover-up — on the part of DOC administrators. Alaska’s Department of Law should immediately launch an investigation (unless one is already underway that I have somehow missed). A state-appointed independent investigation would be even better.
Our state’s political leaders should also be doing all they can to learn more about what’s gone wrong in the DOC.
Instead, based on reporting by both the ADN and Alaska Public Media, Republicans in Alaska’s House of Representatives were more concerned with legislative rules that may or may not have applied to a committee hearing when they recently shut down the testimony of Shepherd and others who were going to present important information about the DOC’s appalling — and perhaps criminal — record of in-custody prisoner deaths.
Rather than quash the hearing, committee members should have listened to the testimony and, if necessary, instructed those testifying to refrain from discussing the current wrongful death case. As Shepherd’s commentary made clear, she had plenty more damning evidence to share.
I hope the committee members who shut down the hearing have read Shepherd’s testimony — and apologized for their inappropriate actions. I also hope that both the legislature and the Dunleavy administration will take the DOC’s inexcusable failings seriously, and that Alaska’s media will take a closer look at what a single prison investigator has discovered. Almost certainly, there’s much more to uncover.
— Bill Sherwonit
Anchorage
Have something on your mind? Send to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Letters under 200 words have the best chance of being published. Writers should disclose any personal or professional connections with the subjects of their letters. Letters are edited for accuracy, clarity and length.