SB 91…is it working? Or does it need to be repealed?

Alaska’s Political Pipeline takes on the topic of crime legislation. Steve Mac Donald spoke with Rep. Matt Claman who thinks the contentious Senate Bill 91 is working and should be tweaked, not repealed.

“What I tell people that want to repeal the bill is that I talk to them about all the good things that are included in Senate Bill 91 and usually when folks hear those details they actually agree that there's a lot of good things in Senate Bill 91--longer sentences for first degree murder, better rights for victims, higher fines for people who commit property crimes.”

Senate President Cathy Giessel says there are new pieces of legislation that address the problems with SB 91. Mac Donald asked her what some of those problems are.

“We know that there are issues with the pre-trial tool that's being used, the pre-trial assessment tool. We'd like to make some tweaks in that and the sentencing changes that were made really need to be addressed and that's what our bills are looking at doing.”

Watch the whole conversation in the videos attached to this story.