Alaska Faces 'Epidemic of Deadly Violence Against Women'

State has country's highest rate of women killed by men for 7th year in a row
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 22, 2022 6:10 PM CDT
Alaska Has Nation's Highest Rate of Women Killed by Men
The police station in Nome, Alaska.   (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Alaska is once again at the top of a grim list. The Violence Policy Center says the state is "experiencing a prolonged epidemic of deadly violence against women" and, for the seventh year in a row, has America's highest homicide rate for "female victims killed by male offenders in single victim/single offender incidents." The state has been in first or second place on the list every year for the last decade, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

In a report released this week based on data from the FBI, the center said the Alaska rate of women killed by men was 3.43 per 100,000 women in 2020—two and a half times the national rate of 1.34 per 100,000 women. Oklahoma, with a rate of 3.28 per 100,000, was second on the list and Wyoming was third, with a rate of 2.80 per 100,000. In Alaska, "I think the most troubling thing to us is just the persistence,” said Kristen Rand, the center's government affairs director, per the Daily News. "When you see that you’re just consistently No. 1, obviously, the problem is real."

The center says that nationwide, most women killed by men are shot—but in Alaska, only a quarter of such killings involved firearms. In more than 90% of cases, the victim knew their killer, and around half the killings involved a current or former domestic partner. The center said the rate of American Indian or Alaska Native women killed by men in Alaska was 12.63 per 100,000 women, 10 times the rate for white women. (More Alaska stories.)

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