OMG! PRISON.

13 students. 1 bus driver. 1 professor. Two and a half hours of driving. AND PRISON! (Well, as prison as you get in Alaska).

Friday morning the Justice Club took it's annual tour to Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, AK. All the planning and coordinating goes to Kristen (she is Madam President after all), except for the fact that I faxed all of the background checks myself! I am trying to take in all of the planning experience that she has, and hopefully get it down, because rumor has it that I will be nominated/running for the Justice Club President. Hopefully she can hook a brother up with as many of her contacts as she can so I can keep providing insightful and interesting events and lectures that my fellow students will enjoy participating in. (But that is IF I become president).

Aside from having to wake up at 6:30 on my only day off this week, I thoroughly enjoyed my tour and Q&A of the correctional officers and psychologists that work at SCCC. We arrived at Spring Creek at about 11:00 a.m. (the shuttle ride was about 2 hours and 45 minutes; thankfully I was in super good company) and the fun began!

For the first few hours that we were there, we were introduced to the superintendent, assistant superintendent, the head probation officer and a psychologist. We got the lay of the land and how each of their positions contribute to rehabilitating those offenders that are there. Spring Creek is the home of Robert Hansen a.k.a. The Butcher Baker. I think that he is on year twenty-something of his 461 years.

Spring Creek was built after the Alaska Supreme Court cases of Cleary (and a few other prisoners) v. pretty much everyone important in the state of AK. They claimed that being imprisoned away from Alaska in the FBOP was unconstitutional as the prison in AZ (where I believe they were) was not up to par as those jails in Alaska. Spring Creek was built as a result, and all of the outside prisoners were returned when it opened in 1988. Spring Creek was built for the capacity of 412 prisoners, but currently houses about 500 inmates. In 1994, Alaska started to send out the notorious criminals to the FBOP in Arizona, and more recently Colorado. Too bad we just can't open Goose Creek.... oh, right that's never going to happen...

It was interesting to hear about the furniture company that used to be up and running at Srping Creek for inmates to work in until it shut down a few years ago due to low funding. I guess it was a pretty legit furniture business because the table we were sitting at in the conference room during our Q&A was a $9, 000 table. OMG, I felt high class in a prison.... There was also an automobile shop in one of the other state jails in which inmates worked on all of the states vehicles; that also was shut down. After our 3 hour Q&A (which was a little long) we finally got to go tour the facility. It was amazing, and I really enjoyed seeing the place. We started out inside the main unit, which happened to be the time that all of the inmates were buying all of their goods from the commissary. We got a lot of shout outs, mainly to the girls, but there were a few call outs to the boys too. ;) It was quite lovely. We did what the officers told us to do, and ignored the most of it. We were not able to talk back to any of the inmates as that would instigate more harassment. We walked through the rec yard and people seemed to be happy to see us walking through the yard, even though the jeering continued.

We made it into the Echo unit which housed the inmates who were under observation by the psychologists that worked at the facility. It was pretty quiet in there because it was free time and people were roaming around the rec yard and buying there goodies from the commissary store in the first building that we were in. The second unit that we went into, which for the life of me I can't remember the name, I think it might have been the Fox unit... (but I could be totally making that up). This was the YOP unit (Youth Opportunity Program). Holy cow... I kind of felt like I was in Juneau; I knew a few kids in there. We had the choice to talk to some of the youth and ask them about there time and what they were in for, and how they passed the time by. The 21 year old that my small group talked with (not sure if I can say his name) was in for 'you know, a few grand theft auto charges.' He chose to serve out all of his time so that he didn't have to deal with probation after he got out. On the inside he finished his high school diploma and has completed 9 college credits that will count towards his degree. He told us about his xbox360; and the unfortunate fact that they could only play 'E' rated games, and watch PG-13 movies. According to this youth, Spring Creek is 'pretty chill compared to what people really think of it.' Before arriving at Spring Creek, he did a few months in jail in Cook Inlet, and before he got transferred his fellow inmates informed him that he was going to 'gladiator school.' Much to his surprise, it was nothing of the hype that he heard it to be. In fact, he told us that they all watched the Lock Up episode on Spring Creek and cracked up at how much they dramatized it for viewers watching. All of the youth were super excited that we were there.

The next part of the tour was best part. We took a tour of House 1, which is also known as the jail inside of Spring Creek. The officers informed us that House 1 was were all the 'bad' inmates go. They are arrested like they would be on the outside of Spring Creek, and go before a review board, and if they are found guilty they get locked up in a room for 23 hours each day of their sentence. This is as close as Spring Creek gets to 'The Hole' or solitary confinement. After they finish their sentence they are released back into the general population. Many of the inmates can spend the majority of their sentences in House 1; it's all up to them. From the moment that we all walked into House 1 we got a show of musical vulgarity. Many of the inmates, aside from cat calls to the lovely and beautiful ladies that I was touring were asked to show them our 'buttholes' (that being the least vulgar, and least inappropriate for my family blog to share); many of the older inmates we could see through their windows looking at us with 'rape eyes' as Kristen coined it and creeper smiles, and continuously flashed us their bodies. The banging and yelling was surprisingly in sync the whole time we were in House 1. All that free time is good for something I guess. ;)

After the excitement of House 1 we were taken upstairs to the visitation center and got a first hand look at the rooms that inmates met with defense lawyers. It was like sitting at the lego table at Thanksgiving all over again with the plastic chairs. Literally. (Yes mom and dad, I remember those days!) The chairs and tables are both plastic so inmates can't rage on their lawyers while discussing a terrible plea deal, or whatever else they might be talking about. While we were walking out of the visitation center we were able to hear one family going into the room to talk to their inmate family through the glass with the phone. The officer was instructing the family to keep the inmate under control or they would take him back and they would not be able to get all of their time in. (Which would suck, because that's a long drive home).

That was pretty much were the tour ended, aside from our last bit of questions. I'm still debating on whether or not I could see myself doing corrections work. I'm pretty sure that it would be interesting, and would always be something new and exciting which is super appealing to me because I am super over doing the same old same old everrrrry day.

Last But Not Least... The Final Chapter!

I’m pretty sure that none of us woke up on time today. I will give Kristen and Rae the fact that they were up before Erika and I though. Erika and I had to check out of our room this morning because the Justice Center could only pay for days through the conference; and since Kristen had a room through Sunday morning, we decided to just all camp out in that room until 3 a.m. to leave for the airport. After getting all of our stuff together we met up with the two of them downstairs.

We decided that we were going to bail on the panels (none of which sounded interesting) and all go do our own things. Kristen and Rae went downtown to the market for breakfast and shopping, while Erika and I hit up the mall. Unfortunately for me I am unable to purchase clothing goods. Erika shopped shirts/shoes/and every shop she could possibly hit in that mall. She picked out lots of great outfits, and bought some really nice heels. At around 1 o’ clock, we met up with Kristen at the same mall in the food court for lunch, and hit a few more of the same stores so Kristen could do some shopping. Shopping with girls is exhausting. Holy damn!

OH! And a homeless man attacked Erika when she stepped outside to inhale some wonderful fresh air… it was ‘hot in the mall.’ She started to hear screaming that was apparently directed toward her. She was ‘screamed at, chased by, and spat at by a psychotic homeless black man!’ She said it was ‘so scary’ and that it ‘looked like he wanted to kill [her]!’

After the mall Erika and I decided to walk down to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Lots of good stuff in there, let me tell you. I realized just how little I know about hockey (or pretty much any sport) walking around looking at all of the people and reading up on their stats. Both Erika and I got our picture taken with the Stanley Cup before we hit up the gift shop to get some stuff for the people who had asked for stuff.

Erika and I walked back to the hotel room in the pouring down rain. It was ridiculous Juneau status that reminded me of how much I dislike the rain. Getting back to the hotel room we made a plan to go visit The CN Tower. We decided that we were going to go somewhere nice for dinner, which meant that we all had to get all classy in our A game outfits for the night. While we were gearing up to go out we started to hear a loud booming base from a room across the hall which excited Rae because she thought they were having a dance party. After she finally finished getting dressed and putting her face on (something I have been saying all week) and with a little encouragement from us, she went over and knocked on the door to see if she could join; or that is what we thought she was going to do. She told them that their music was SUPER loud and that she didn’t appreciate it. The whole situation ended up to be pretty funny because what she thought was going to turn out into a dance party ended up being five older men in their mid-forties have a dance party for one of their birthdays. One of them, who happened to be pant-less, was asking me about the ratio of women to men in AK and if it was really 3:1… I replied to him “it is as long as you were wearing pants.” He turned red and cracked up. I’m pretty sure that you can assume that they were pretty freaking wasted.

The CN Tower is a communications tower in Toronto that stands 1, 815 feet in the air. The building was started in 1973 and was finished roughly two and a half years later in 1976. Similar to the Space Needle it also has an observation deck at the tippy top of the tower. It only took 58 seconds to get to the top of the tower. In one part of the observation deck you were standing on glass. It was a little nerve racking making that first step onto the glass floor and looking almost 2,000 feet down at the ground. The CN Tower remains to be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. The girls and I got a table and had a drink while we observed the lights of the city at night. It was very cool to see our hotel all lit up on the strip. Oh, yeah, and before I forget; Erika fell pretty hard inside the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. It was EPIC.

After leaving the CN Tower we went to a Japanese restaurant that had a DJ. We were all super into the beats that were being dropped as we ate our sushi. The food was super amazing and we enjoyed our last night out on the town!

Currently Kristen, Erika and I are sitting in the lobby reminiscing about the trip and the loads of fun that we have had. We are planning on writing some serious thank you notes to all of the people that helped make this trip possible for us. Every bit helped! I might have already mentioned it, but I did receive quite a substantial amount of money for this trip, which made me super happy.

Erika and Kristen were sitting at the hotel bar tonight, having a cocktail before our early morning departure when some older gentlemen, or as I like to call them vultures, swooped into the seats surrounding them and totally started to prey on them. One of them just happened to be a personal liability lawyer who Kristen pretty much told was an awful one after he tried grabbing her in inappropriate places… and walked out on them. Oh, the good times in Canada.

See you back in America! &%$# Yeah!

The Best Canadian Day so far!

It's 3 a.m. here in Toronto, and if I could blog about what just happened, I totally would.

I think I finally forced myself to roll out of bed at 8:15 this morning; which meant that I missed out on the first panel that I wanted to attend about assisted suicide in America. I think that it is a subject that needs a lot more insight and was definitely interested in what the speakers had to say about it. Oh well.

The first panel I attended had three speakers which had topics somewhat related to Social Disorganization Theory. Social Disorganization Theory is all about the place. It doesn't really include characteristics such as race/age/sex. It is a theory about where kids grow up, and how kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to be related with street crime and the joining into gangs. The other part of this panel (FINALLY A GOOD ONE) gave me another reason for me to hate Wal-Mart! :) It discussed the indirect relationship that the poverty Wal-Mart creates to violent crimes in counties across the nation. 88% of the Continental United States lives within 15 minutes of a Wal-Mart. Holy dang.

The second panel I attended was about women on death row. The panelist discussed the question she addressed in her research: Are the women on death row really the worst of the worst. Interestingly enough you probably already know that answer. Well, of the 34 women that she studied on death row in Ohio, most of them had pleaded down to LWOP sentences. The two women that were sentenced to death were charged with aggravated homicide, and complicity murder. Interestingly enough, the woman who microwaved her child was sentenced to LWOP, and the mother of two children who burned them alive after starting fire to her house also received LWOP. As my grandmother would say... "That's 'justice' for you."

The student poster panels took place today as well. I had the opportunity to see a couple of them. The Deviance of Walt Disney was probably the best one that I had checked out. They examined Disney movies from '37-'77 and how the themes in their movies influence children to become racist/sexist/assuming violence is okay through vengeance (LION KING!). It was a very good panel, and I asked lots of questions. The other fascinating panel discussed the admissibility of hypnosis in criminal trials. The lady had a list of 12-13 things that she thought would make hypnosis okay to enter into evidence as long as they were followed; few of them being not to coach the witness under the hypnotist's trance or whatever they call it these days. She saw my name tag, and then started asking me all of these legal questions about AK, some of which I could answer, and some of which I could not. It was nice to interact with a few students from other schools around the country and to see what kinds of research that they are doing.

Erika also gave the second part of her 'voluntold' speech. Unfortunately nobody told her that they reduced the time to 1 minute instead of 3 minutes, after she was already cut off during the first speech. So, her and I edited like crazy to try and make the speech 1 minute without trying to kill this poor girls speech. She gave the speech, and we peaced out. We didn't want to wait around in that room anymore. We were both a little bummed we missed a couple of things because we were working on someone else's speech; but we were very glad that we got to help.

After the panels, I took my COMM law midterm, which quite frankly, I probably didn't do so hot. But I can probably attribute that to the fact that I haven't opened a text book in over a week because I have been focused on ACJS and attending as many panels as I could. Thankfully, T-Payne is letting us postpone our Terrorism midterm to Spring Break so we can get as much ACJS stuff crammed in during the day as we can, and still be able to go check out the town after the conference day ends. Totally awesome.

Medieval Times is brilliant by the way. Absolutely brilliant. If you have ever had the chance of watching The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey, then you know exactly what I am talking about. At first it seemed a little cheesy, but then as the knights started to joust, and sword fight all over the place it started to get pretty awesome. There was SO much food. They start you out with tomato soup, followed by garlic bread, chicken, baked potato, ribs, and a baked pastry. It was so much food. They also had some good drinks that we explored! :)

After we returned to the hotel, Erika Kristen and I hit the town. After we tried unsuccessfully to get into the fancy night clubs (we couldn't find a working ATM and we also noticed that they were screening super fancy outfits... not that we didn't look good; we are just accustomed to the anything goes of Alaska) Erika scoped out a nice little bar that we had a lot of fun. It reminded me a lot of McClairen's Pub from HIMYM. The resemblance was astonishing. Oh, and as if we didn't have enough food at the feast, we ordered a ton more food and a few more drinks. We didn't finish all of the food; so on our way back to the hotel I gave our leftovers to one of the homeless guys I saw on the street under the condition that he shared with the his friends.

Well, it's 4 a.m. right now, and I am super dead! I am crashing in a few minutes. I will keep you posted about tomorrows events tomorrow night! I also put up a few pictures in the previous Canada blogs. If you are interested in checking them out.

Until then, CHEERS!

Toronto; Day 3

So, before I get to the details of today, I just need to anounce to the rest of the world (if you didn't already hear the 'HELL THE EFF YES's from Rae and I today) we both had our bags found and returned to us from the airline. Thank. God. Those jeans probably couldn't have left Canada on their own. Seriously.

Today was a pretty low key day. Both Erika and I weren't feeling to well this morning, so we both overslept; a lot. Rae came knocking on our door at about 11:3o and politelty started yelling at us to get the hell out of bed, and even more nicely opened our curtains to let the light in our room. Rae bought clothes yesterday to wear today on the off chance that we didn't get our bags back; so it was nice to see happy Rae again (although, she will tell you that Happy Rae never disappeared ;))

While Kristen (and what I thought was Erika) were attending a University of Cincinnati luncheon; Rae and I both went to a panel that we wanted to attend. Well, let me tell you... I wish we would have just attended the luncheon and met some people. It was awful. Apparently because the ACJS conference is out of the country this year it has had "quite frankly, a super crappy attendance rate. I have heard from many professors that people didn’t file for their passports in time to get here (which is odd, because I filed for mine a little over 4 weeks before I boarded the plane to come), which means that they can’t get across the border. This has been the second panel that I have attended in which less than half the people presenting bothered to show up. Fortunately, I learned that it isn’t rude to get up and leave if you aren’t interested and want to go to a different panel that sounds inifinitely more interesting than the one that you are currently wasting your time in. I’ve been exercising that right in full force today.

Fortunate for me, the second panel that I decided that could be interesting was amazing. It was all about organized crime inside the United States, and one presenter discussed biker gangs as international crime. I learned a lot about Hells Angles and the Warlords, and some a plethora of other biker gangs and what it takes to be in a gang, and what exactly they were all about. The professor lecturing is currently a biker (wouldn’t tell us if he was affiliated with any certain gang) so he knew his stuff. It was great.

The last panel I attended, I attended solo, and really, isn’t worth mentioning... but that’s probably because I got up and left early. I have a midterm to take tomorrow, so I decided to use that time to go up and actually finish the chapters that I am going to be tested on tomorrow. Rae, Erika and I decided to postpone the Terrorism final until Spring Break because quite frankly, school has been the last thing to cross our jet-lagged, under slept minds.

We all met up later in the evening and went to this Indian restaurant down from the hotel. Indian food really isn’t my thing... but I ate some food anyways. We invited one of the professors from UAA to join us. We had a pretty good time.
After the long windy walk back to the hotel, we hung out at the hotel bar for a while, and chit chatted about random Alaskany (I just made that a word) things to do because T-Payne (our UAA professor) is new to Anchorage. It was good times.

Now, it’s almost 1:30 a.m. and I am super tired, and have to be up early to attend a panel that hopefully is more promising than most of what I have already seen.

If any of my words seem to be super weird, it’s because I’m tired and using a version of Microsoft Word that doesn’t correct my words the way I want them too... It’s in Canadian or some b.s. that I can’t fix. I might edit when I am more coherent. Post more tomorrow! We are going to check out all of the student panels and see what we have to do to get our own thing going next year.

The Panels

The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Conference Day 1 –

Unfortunately there is no way to pick out the horrible panels from the good ones. Out of the three panels that I attended today, only one of them was close to interesting.

The first panel I attended was all about the last statements from death row; whether or not death row inmates expressed any form of apology to family members or to the victim’s families present at the execution. It was interesting to see the breakdown of the United States and how the presentations examined the history of anthropological apologetic attitudes of the Southern population especially. They found that people in the South tended to show remorse more towards the victim’s families and apologize to everyone involved in the situation.

The second panel I attended with the girls was about dealing with terrorism in countries such as Iraq and what to do when the United States leaves the country, and how the government is formed and controlled after the United States pulls out. Awful panel. The last part of the panel presentation was about Muslim radicalization in the Caribbean. This part of the panel was pretty good. It was kind of refreshing to talk about terrorists that aren’t from Iraq or Afghanistan for a change.

Oh, and the final panel I attended with Kristen, we ended up leaving, which is unfortunate because the topic sounded interesting: Criminal Policy and Procedures in Canada. The slides were jam packed with too many graphs (and if I learned anything from Dr. Barnes it is that you shouldn’t have more than 2 graphs or tables per slide!) and the presenter wasn’t doing a very good job keeping all of the statistics separated. We weren’t the only ones that left.

Erika had the privilege of speaking on behalf of a Alpha Phi Sigma member running for the groups vice president position. Alpha Phi Sigma is the honor society for Criminal Justice students across the country. Unfortunately due to funding none of the students from UNR could make the conference. Erika read her speech for her, and we all got to spend some time with the group and how their elections ran.

After we finished up with the events that we all wanted to attend, we went and checked out the mall that was connected with the hotel underground. Pretty awesome stuff. I bought some cheapie underwear and socks for half of the price that the hotel was going to charge me to wash them (NECESSITY!). It was nice to feel comfortable again. :)

We ate at a nice little Irish Pub super close to the hotel and the food was amazing. Rae and Kristen ate a lamb shank, Erika thoroughly enjoyed her steak and I ate every last bite of my seafood linguini. It was super good. We hung out there for a while and drank a bottle of wine before we went upstairs for a movie!

THere was also a student luncheon at the basement of the hotel that we attended. There were a couple of people sitting at our table from Texas. As if the world couldn't get any smaller, they knew a couple of people that are employed with APD from college.

I still have no suitcase; but I will hopefully get it tomorrow; they said it’s usually a 24 hour turn around.

Hopefully tomorrow the panels are better, or I just pick better ones to attend!

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Holy cow.

The Good:

Erika, Kristen, Rae and I have officially made it to Toronto. It was an adventure I think for all of us, as we both parted ways (unexpectedly) in Phoenix early in the a.m. Upon our arrival in Phoenix we all walked over to the gate that we assumed that we would be departing from. That turned out to be false. Because Rae and I only briefly glanced over our itineraries in the morning; we overlooked a terminal change for the both of us for our flight to L.A. Unfortunately we realized it the change after it was too late. Together we bolted from terminal 3 to terminal 2 as quick as we could (which ended up taking 15-20 minutes after running/walking/shuttle rides).

What were we to do?! Well, after getting harassed by one CSA at the United Airlines counter, we waited in line for another 25 minutes to regroup and examine our options. Fortunately for us, the person who booked our original tickets listed us for a back up flight knowing that we might not have made the connecting flight anyways. THANK GOD! We ended up being rerouted through Chicago (gross - another 5ish hour flight!). It took us almost an hour to get through security (which meant that we probably wouldn't have made our original flight anyways), had a little bit of fun with TSA, and boarded the plane to Chicago!

We had a nice hour and a half lay over in Chicago to grab a bite to eat (because Chicago is hands down, the best pizza I will ever eat), and actually made it to our gate on time. We ate our food after we wandered around for a bit checking out the ginormous airport. We arrived in Canada only 45 minutes after we would have originally made it had we gotten on the right flight this morning; all worked out nicely.

The Bad:

Rae and I don't have our suitcases for some reason. Hopefully by the early a.m. we will have gotten them back from the airport!

The Ugly (or what I am going to call ugly):

The girls had to primp themselves up after a long day of flying. I myself felt and looked dead. We made ourselves decent, and went to the hotel lounge for some chow! Now, we are crashing!

[On an awesome side note: I did happen to get my own room out of the deal. Because Kristen and I were making responsible decisions, and threw it up in the air that we might be drinking, the University felt uncomfortable with us all rooming together in the chance that someone might get sexually assault/harassed, so bam, I got my own room. We originally planned on sharing to cut some of the costs of rooming at the hotel].

Tomorrow the panels for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences start, so we are ready to learn!

Mums in Anchorage = BUSY week

Kelsey and I had a pretty eventful week. My mom came to town this week; already having a list of things to accomplish before she left on Thursday. I did manage to get her to sit through a couple of movies with us.

Saturday morning I picked her up at the airport and took her up to Gma's house so she could get the subie. I convinced her that she wouldn't be 'cramping Kelsey and I's style' by staying with us; so she did. On a good note, she was super pumped with how my place looked, and how good we seemed to be at all of the up keep!

We took an adventure through Sears Mall and looked at a few washers and dryers and asked a lot of questions because frankly, I have little space for a new set. The stackable set that I ended up getting actually turned out to be at Best Buy, so we did some shopping around! They should be here next week! Horray!

We also had a good time trying to get mom through the security gate at Fort Richardson when we went to the cemetery to give the grandparents some flowers! Kelsey and I both seemed to get our ID's scanned with no problem, but moms buzzed like a robot would buzz going through a metal detector. It took a few extra minutes so the officer could 'check her out' and he let us through. We trekked through two feet of snow to find grandma and grandpas headstones that were barely peaking through the snow; it was super cold. Hadn't been in a while, so it was nice to be out there, especially on a beautiful day like it was.

Oh, yeah, and we ate. It's always awesome to hit some of the better places to eat in town when the family comes! We hit Arctic Roadrunner, The Lucky Wishbone, Jewel Lake Pizza $ Tea Garden; oh so goooood.

Oh, and as a highlight of my week, my water heater had some repairs done. Yay for the responsibilities of owning your own place. I thought I had a major problem with the water heater because water was leaking out of the panels on the side. Fortunately, it was just a leak from the pipe going into the top of the heater, and dripping in through the screw holes. I imagine the problem had been there for a while, because the bonehead people who lived here before me put a 'water band-aid' over the leak, and just called it good. One plumber call later, shutting off the water to the entire condominium complex, through the crawlspace of someone else's unit and my water heater was fixed! (Should have been a damn plumber)!

It was great to have mom here in town, we accomplished a lot! I'll be in Canada next week for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; so I'll be posting about that!