Campbell suggests making TWC program statewide

Published on March 11th, 2010

By ALEX DEMARBAN

Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell speaks at the Bethel Chamber of Commerce luncheon held at Shogun Restaurant. (Courtesy Photo, Renee Limoge)

Campbell meets with members of Bethel's sexual assault response effort. (Courtesy Photo, Renee Limoge)

Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell visited Bethel on March 3 and carried a message that the state needs generational change to lower chronic levels of sexual assault, abuse and domestic violence.

He explored the new shelter opened by the Tundra Woman's Coalition, visited the Yukon-Kuskokwim Correctional Center and talked about economic development, including the Donlin Creek prospect, at the Bethel Chamber of Commerce.

Campbell was especially impressed with the Teens Acting Against Violence program, a violence prevention program that raises awareness about issues such as sexual assault, date rape, alcohol and drug abuse and suicide. Campbell answers more questions in the following interview with the Tundra Drums.

I hear you were impressed with the Teens Acting Against Violence program. Can you tell me why you'd like to see it replicated across Alaska?

I didn't know about that program until I got out there. When I got out there, my first meeting was with the Tundra Women's Coalition, and Michelle DeWitt is the director there.

She had me over there to show me the new facility she built, and I saw the shelter program they're doing to help families that are having issues.

I was very impressed, impressed with the facility because it's new, but probably more impressed with her and the work she's doing.

Because when they built that facility it wasn't just state funding, it wasn't just federal funding, it was Denali Commission, Rasmuson Foundation.

She worked very aggressively to build a coalition to build the facility.

That lady has got it together. She knows what's needed out there and she's doing a great job.

She told me about the TAAV. She explained the program and the connection that got me excited is they do an Outward Bound (type of) program.

That's where they go outdoors. I went to Outward Bound in 1968 and I know what it meant to me and what it meant to my peers to participate in that.

So that really jazzed me, that type of principal and applying it to the teens there to get them active as leaders with self-confidence to tell people that violence isn't right and that we as teenagers aren't going to tolerate it.

Because this is a generational thing. To stop domestic violence and sexual assaults and sexual abuse, you've got to get the next generation to understand it's wrong. So the teens doing this program to me seems like a breath of fresh air.

I was jazzed. I really thought they were right on out there.

You got a program being done in a community that has traction. And it's what we're trying to accomplish in government anyways, and that's just to have that generational change.

I just want to explore it a little more. I think it's something that might work in other parts of the state.

So any plans to push that forward or is it too early to say?

Well, I will talk to Michelle (DeWitt) and continue learning more about the program and probably in next year's budget cycle probably be talking to Health and Social Services and Public Safety about how we might be able to consider it.

But right now, the focus is on finishing up this year's budget and getting stuff done in the Legislature by April. So there will be nothing I'll be doing to request the governor and the Legislature to insert any funding or programs between now and the middle of April when they adjourn.

There's just not enough time.

But I do want to get more educated on it, learn about it, maybe see if there's a proposal the administration could present for next year.

That sounds exciting. So I understand your next visit was the correctional center?

Yes. I'll tell you, first I was surprised there were so many (inmates). There were like over 130 in the jail, and more than 80 in the other center they had.

I thought that number was fairly high. They said it was a little on the high side.

They're from the whole area, not just Bethel. Most of them weren't Bethel residents. They were from the other 50 villages around there.

I talked to inmates from all different villages.

I can't explain why (it's high now). It could just be cyclical.

I came out wanting to look at the facility because of its age. It's in a rough environment and I wanted to make sure it's being maintained well and operated well. It is. The people there are taking tremendous care of it. They're good employees.

From that, since the facility is operational and doing a good job, structurally, then how are we doing with the population?

I was in there in the (GED program, where inmates can earn high-school equivalency diploma) and there were seven or eight inmates in there studying.

There was a teacher from UA going through course material with them. He told me he's been doing it a number of years and they've been very successful in helping people get their GEDs while they're their. And that was good.

And the other one that was good, they were doing an anger management seminar in another area, and that one had probably a dozen or more inmates in it, and they were consciously working on behavioral training, recognizing when you get angry, and not allow emotions to take control of your anger, but to control it yourself.

And it was taught by a former inmate and who said, "I had anger management problems, and now I'm back here to teach these guys you got to control it."

He was from the region. So what was good is, it's not just about locking someone up, but about helping them make changes in their lives so they don't come back. And there's a lot of proactive stuff being done to help that.

I was there at lunch time, where food was being served and inmates prepare the food, but it's not just any inmate, it's a reward.

You have to want do it, you have to pass a health exam to do it, you have to be on good behavior. You can't screw up. So there's some motivation there to prepare food and serve lunches. So it's more than just locking people up and I was pleased to see all the proactive stuff Corrections is doing out there.

And you also spoke to the Chamber of Commerce?

I did. I spoke the Chamber at the Shogun Restaurant. I gave them the message of the Parnell-Cambell administration, that we're supporting economic development.

I spoke of some of the challenges, such as Red Dog Mine. They're having an appeal of their permit with EPA. And some of the challenges with Shell on offshore drilling and the Corps rejecting the permit for Conoco Phillips and the Colville River Delta development they want to do for drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve.

So basically, I was saying you look around and these types of developments that we need to do in Alaska are being stopped at every turn now. We're kind of under a threat by people outside our state primarily who are trying to stop every development move we're making right now. And that's dangerous for us because we need jobs in Alaska and if all this is shut down and we don't have jobs, it doesn't matter if we have vocational training or college degrees or what. If there's no employment in Alaska, this state will be in financial trouble.

So we talked about that. We also talked about my trip, especially meeting at TWC and the correctional facility and the governor's interest in trying to stem domestic violence and sexual abuse and about adding troopers and VPSOs into the budget and doing it in future years as well.

But I wanted to make sure the message was clearly transmitted that Gov. Parnell and I are not just interested in (arresting more people) and having more jails, it's behavioral change that's we really want.

There's much more that's needed. We're trying to make sure that right now we stop the chronic problem of abuses that's happening and arrest those that are doing it and do the right things to stem it.

But to really stop it, that's the generational change I was talking about earlier with TAAV. The kids growing up have to say this is wrong, we're not going to do it, and we'll have a better society by not doing it.

Did people at the Bethel meeting express a lot of concern about the local economy?

We talked about that a little bit. I'd been out there before, so most of them know I know a lot of the issues. I know the price of diesel fuel. I know the price of milk.

But we did talk about economic development like Donlin Creek, as that develops as a mine out there, it's going to need energy.

So is there an ability to bring (Cook Inlet) gas to that mine, and if you bring gas to the mine and you're close enough to the region, can you now bring gas to the region to take away some of the diesel dependency?

So yes, we talked about some of the opportunities that might be generated.

The gas line would be a smaller diameter line they could use to bring it to the mine area and start fanning it out to the communities.

That's a theory. Just a start. I don't think you'll find any submission on projects for environmental clearance on that. But my perspective is this is a good story. We should be looking at stuff like that.