Alaska has a very long history of exiling it's prisoners to facilities outside the state. In the early eighties the state agreed to bring prisoners exiled to federal prisons back to Alaska as part of settling a civil law suit, commonly known as the Cleary Final Settlement Act. Their actual return was accomplished in 1988 after Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska was constructed.
Because of overcrowding and the department of corrections inability to comply with the population caps the Cleary Final Settlement Act impose, in late 1994 the department of corrections once again began a program of exile that continues to this day. This time to a private for profit prison in Florence Arizona.
Exile has a profoundly negative effect on both prisoners and their families, and that negative effect is its most extreme when the exiled prisoner is an Alaska Native person.
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