CIVIC-PG Track B: Bridging the Rural Justice Gap: Innovating & Scaling Up Civil Access to Justice in Alaska

Under-resourced rural infrastructure, including health care, employment, and education, put individuals at a high risk for civil legal problems in the United States. Yet many rural communities have few if any attorneys, and access to justice supports often neglect entrenched barriers for people living in rural areas like distance or inconsistent broadband. Research shows that these "rural legal deserts" leave individuals with unmet civil legal needs like debt collection, domestic violence, and eviction with little chance of achieving a just resolution. The consequences of this are enormous—particularly in Alaska, where only 3.52 legal aid attorneys are available for every 10,000 Alaskans in poverty. A new program in Alaska may offer a model that will address rural justice gaps in a more sustainable and culturally responsive way. In 2020, a community-based justice worker (CJW) program was developed to train community health workers already embedded in Alaska’s rural communities to provide formal legal advocacy, informal assistance, and monitoring across agencies and court systems. The program holds dual promise: it is a replicable delivery model and will provide innovations in technologies and regulation that enable other civil legal services to meet widespread unmet need. The project team seeks the full participation and knowledge of underrepresented groups in STEM fields as well as healthcare and law. The broader impacts of the Stage 1 activities and the vision for the Stage 2 pilot include: 1) scaling up a regional model of rural access to justice; 2) transforming national efforts to address the access to justice crisis; 3) contributing to legal and economic empowerment; and 4) enhancing rural infrastructure via partnerships across civic agencies, tribal and state governments, and academia.The project team includes the Executive Director of Alaska Legal Services, an expert on evidence-based access to justice policy, and a leading researcher in rural access to justice. The researchers will partner with an Advisory Committee comprised of members with regional tribal, state, and institutional perspectives. Stage 1 activities will focus on building relationships and regional knowledge, eliciting additional civic priorities, and ensuring a comprehensive, fast-paced, and actionable plan for the Stage 2 pilot. This will occur via in-person and remote convenings in Anchorage and in three "hub" communities that are access points for hundreds of distinct tribal villages. This project will draw on and contribute to diverse theoretical perspectives on legal empowerment and legal capability, access to justice, and rural places. It will address the persistent "rural neglect" of relevant scholarship and underscore diverse rural individuals’ own expertise in understanding the effects of rural legal deserts. This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program—Track B. Bridging the gap between essential resources and services & community needs—and is a collaboration between NSF, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.