The Alaska Native population, like many other minority populations, is disproportionately represented in the correctional system. Alaska Natives represent between 30% and 40% of the state's inmate population at any given point in time. The disproportionate occurrence of social maladies, including criminal activity, in Native American populations has been partially attributed to cultural conflict that induces anomie, social disorganization, and personal disorganization. This article examines the existence of relationships between where inmates have been raised and the crimes they committed as adults and whether the effects and occurrence of cultural conflict varies according to the rural or urban nature of their upbringing. The results suggest that the effects of cultural conflict are most pronounced in rural Alaskan communities.
The Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS) was administered to 223 United States and 180 English institutionalized juvenile offenders. In a crosscultural comparison of the subjects on the six TSCS empirical scales, both groups present indications of significantly more psychopathology on five of the six scales than nondelinquents. When the two groups are contrasted, the U.S. group is found to score significantly higher, overall, in psychopathology than the English delinquents. Discriminant function analysis identified two of the six empirical psychopathology scales, Personal Integration and Personality Disorder, capable of distinguishing the subjects by country. Analyses of the data suggest that recent-past and current conservative policies governing official responses to youth crime fail because they tend to address delinquency as if the underlying causes are constitutional. Rather, this data suggest that the differences found between the two groups are cultural in nature.
In 1956 the United States government allowed the Territory (now State) of Alaska to select 404,695 hectares of land to provide specifically for mental health services for Alaskans. State legislatures have since tried to place this land into private ownership because of the ‘highest and best use principle’ of land management. ‘Strict usage principle’ opponents have countered with legal action, the result of which is to place the land in a status where it serves neither proponent groups. The question raised by this piece of land history is whether, in a federalism such as the United States, it is possible to use land to serve dedicated social needs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.