Meet our new teammate, Doron.

Friend –

At the beginning of the year, we brought in a new Prison Project Intake Attorney to help us ensure our mission of protecting the civil rights and liberties of incarcerated Alaskans.

Meet Doron Levine <[link removed]> – he comes to us as a former public defender in the Mat-Su who has represented people accused of misdemeanor and felony crimes. He also defended incarcerated children in juvenile delinquency cases and patients in civil commitment hearings at Mat-Su Regional Hospital. These experiences motivated Doron to advocate for structural change in our approach to criminal justice.

In Doron's first few days with the ACLU of Alaska, we all read the stories published by the Anchorage Daily News <[link removed]> that shared the systemic issue of delayed trial times that have slowed our criminal legal system across the state to nearly a grinding halt. However, Doron noticed critical pieces missing: the article failed to account for how these trial delays were impacting defendants, and how public defenders were being tasked with a crippling caseload, among other things.

Doron shared his experience working as a public defender and the side of the story that wasn't included in the article in an op-ed that ran over the weekend. Read his piece on our website. <[link removed]>

As Doron writes, the criminal legal system is overwhelmed, and as a result of this failure, the American promise of the right to a speedy trial has been sacrificed. Change will require a full set of facts, and a willingness from people who interact with the criminal legal system to come together for honest conversations about what we can all do better to uphold the promises of fairness, justice, and freedom that we are each entitled to.

If we don't share the full truths of problems, we risk repeating history. We risk passing policies that disproportionately impact those who are already overrepresented in Alaska's prison system. We risk reinforcing colonial narratives that empower the public to treat their neighbors as undeserving of equality and the promises enshrined into our founding documents.

None of that will make us safer.

As we head into the Alaska legislative session with a full docket of goals to make Alaska's criminal legal system more just and fair, we are reminded of our commitment to tell complete stories and be honest about the realities we face every day.

I couldn't be more excited to have Doron on our team to work towards these goals and to support the Prison Project. I look forward to sending you more updates in the coming weeks.

Megan Edge
Alaska Prison Project Director, ACLU of Alaska


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