Is Alaska an Aberration or the Worst Case? A Robust Regression Approach to Understanding Inter-State Variations of Forcible Rape

ABSTRACT

Alaska’s rape rate perennially exceeds that of all other states. This study considers Alaska’s socioeconomic extremes—its frontier demography, its externally dependent resource economy, and its military presence—as explanations for inter-state variations of sexual violence. Robust regression procedures that accommodate extreme values were used to account for the effects of measures capturing Alaska’s unique socioeconomic qualities on state-level rape rates. The results showing that other economically dependent states with frontier demographic structures also report elevated rape rates indicate that despite its endemic levels of sexual violence, Alaska is not an aberration but is instead the worst case possible.

Notes

¹ The surplus of men has not been missed by Alaska’s entrepreneurs who have given us (1) a nationally distributed magazine, AlaskaMen, which contains personal advertisements of “bachelors who face the extremities of Alaska life” (Carter 2013:3) and (2) a women’s souvenir t-shirt proclaiming that for single women in Alaska, “the odds are good, but the goods are odd” (Hamilton and Seyfrit 1994:18).

² This is due to Alaska’s geo-central location. Anchorage—the state’s most populous city and its largest military presence—“is within nine hours flying time, or less, of 90 percent of the world’s industrialized population” (Vesely, 2006:D1).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Darryl S. Wood

DARRYL S. WOOD, an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University Vancouver, has published research on the causes of, and responses to, violence in rural, remote, and indigenous communities.