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The Fairbanks District Office currently is charged with oversight
of felony offenders, including tracking offenders who have
absconded from probation and/or parole. The office is responsible
for a geographic area extending from the Alaska Range to the Brooks
Range, including the Tanana and Yukon River watersheds - over 37%
of Alaska and an area greater than the size of California, the
Nation's third largest state.
The largest metropolitan area in the probation district is around
Fairbanks, where Alaska Natives make up about 9% of the 85,000
total population. Most (well over 60%) of the probation district's
approximately 800 supervised offenders live within the Fairbanks
metropolitan area. The probation district contains a total of more
than 40 communities, with populations ranging in size from
approximately 31,000 (Fairbanks) to fewer than 10 (e.g., Kallands).
Usually, the District supervises offenders living in about half of
those communities. Many of them are fly-in only, with no road
connection.
The office is staffed by two District Supervisors, 11 probation-
parole officers (10 of whom supervise offenders and the one who
writes presentence reports on a full-time basis), three criminal
justice technicians, and one office assistant. Three probation
officers provide supervision to specialized caseloads: sex
offenders, chronically mentally ill offenders, and Felony Driving
Under the Influence offenders. Two probation officers supervise
drug-related and high-risk offenders. Two other probation officers
supervise the rural regions. Of those, one supervises the rural
areas near the road system - south from Fairbanks on the Richardson
Highway to the Canadian Border, and also south on the Parks Highway
to Cantwell. The other "rural" probation officer supervises the
area north of Fairbanks to the Brooks Mountain Range and east to
Kaltag, all of which is primarily inaccessible by road.
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About the Area
While the City of Fairbanks is an urban area with urban amenities,
less than five miles from the center of town people are using wood
stoves for heat, hauling drinking water to their homes, and in some
cases still using outhouses. Due to the extreme temperatures (as
hot as 99 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and as low as -72
degrees Fahrenheit in the winter), work tends to be seasonal -
construction, fire fighting, tourism, etc. The farther away from
Fairbanks one gets, the more people are very dependent on
subsistence hunting and fishing as a necessary means of living
through the winters. The Alaska Native population is mostly
Athabascan.
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