Alaska

Alaska’s prisons are run by the Alaska Department of Corrections (AK DOC). Alaska is one of a handful of states with a unified corrections system: because Alaska has no county jail system, the state DOC operates both pretrial detention and the prisons for sentenced people, and most of its institutions hold both unsentenced (pretrial) and sentenced people in the same facility. The agency generally refers to a person in its custody as a prisoner, and people are located through VINELink (the national VINE service; select Alaska), or by calling 1-800-247-9763.

This section details all 13 of Alaska’s correctional institutions. The largest is Goose Creek Correctional Center (Point MacKenzie); the only maximum-security prison is Spring Creek Correctional Center (Seward); and the dedicated facility for women is the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center (Eagle River), though several regional facilities also hold women. The others are the Anchorage Correctional Complex (the metro booking and intake hub), Lemon Creek (Juneau), Fairbanks, the Wildwood Correctional Complex (Kenai), Yukon-Kuskokwim (Bethel), Palmer Correctional Center and the separate Mat-Su Pretrial Facility (both near Palmer), Ketchikan, Anvil Mountain (Nome), and the minimum-security Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm.

A defining feature for families is geography. Several institutions are in communities reachable mainly by air — Bethel (Yukon-Kuskokwim), Nome (Anvil Mountain), Ketchikan, and Juneau (Lemon Creek) are not on Alaska’s road system — so an in-person visit can require air travel. The DOC can approve longer or off-hours special visits for families traveling long distances, decided case by case with the facility.

A small number of contract municipal community jails in remote communities briefly hold people after arrest before transferring them to a DOC facility, and Sentenced Electronic Monitoring is a community-supervision program rather than a facility; these are part of the system but are not individually covered here. Alaska currently holds all of its prisoners in state — it ended its use of out-of-state private prisons after Goose Creek opened in 2012.

Alaska has no death penalty — capital punishment was abolished in 1957, before statehood. No Alaska facility holds a death row.

A few features shape how families stay in touch. Incoming personal mail goes directly to the facility — Alaska does not use an off-site mail-scanning vendor — and follows plain white-envelope rules, with books and packages accepted only from approved vendors. Phone service runs through Securus (a prepaid AdvanceConnect account); the DOC does not have an established video-visiting program, so in-person visiting is the norm. Money goes onto a DOC Offender Trust Account — deposited in person at any institution or mailed as a money order to the person at their facility — with no third-party deposit vendor. Health care is provided in-house by DOC medical staff, with published co-pays. Independent oversight runs through the Alaska Office of the Ombudsman.

Use the guides below for the statewide rules, or go straight to a specific facility.