Alaska has the highest homicide rate in the nation for women killed by men — for the seventh year in a row.
The state has been first or second on that list for a decade. That’s according to a report released Tuesday from the Violence Policy Center, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that advocates for gun control.
The report details findings from the most recent data, which is from 2020. In that year, 12 Alaska women were killed by men. More than 90% of the victims were killed by someone they knew. A quarter of them were killed with guns.
The report says state lawmakers should prioritize ending the “epidemic of deadly violence” against Alaska women — and particularly Alaska Native women.
According to the report, 3.43 Alaskan women were killed for every 100,000 people living in the state — a rate more than twice the national average. Alaska Native women were killed by men at 10 times the rate white women in Alaska were.
The federal Office of Violence Against Women is holding its annual Government to Government Tribal Consultation meetings in Anchorage this week. Its aims are to figure out how to administer tribal funds to make Indigenous women safer and to strengthen the federal response to these violent crimes.
