Tackling Some of Alaska’s Toughest Issues

From KTVA Channel 11: For years Alaska has been the state with the highest sexual assault rate in the country. Lawmakers now say they have some solutions.

Two months ago, the “Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee” heard from experts on how to reduce those high numbers of sexual assault cases. Since the hearings, they’ve had time to analyze what they heard come out with a report of their recommendations to tackle the problem. One of the recommendations that came out of that report is increasing the presence of Village Public Safety Officers in rural communities.

“If you have a VPSO, cases are two and a half times more likely to result in a conviction than if you don’t have one. So it’s a small concrete step you can make, to make certain that people that are rape, woman who are raped, see the rapist go to jail. That’s just what we all want to see,” said Senator Hollis French.

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