Alaska still has a loophole big enough to bury a body in

Alaska has a loophole big enough to bury a body in.

Right now, if someone in Alaska witnesses a murder or another violent crime against an adult and does not report it, the law treats that failure as a violation. Not a misdemeanor. Not a felony. A violation with a $500 fine.

That should alarm people. The fine is less than the penalty for littering.

Alaska has seen this pattern before. Lawmakers moved to close the “Schneider loophole” in 2019, and this year another bill was introduced to tighten a gap in the state’s sexual-assault law involving health care workers.

Kathleen’s Law was introduced last year, and one of those public safety loopholes that was aimed at fixing part of that problem. It would have raised the penalty for failure to report a violent crime against an adult from a violation to a criminal misdemeanor. It was not an extreme proposal. It was an attempt to say that when someone witnesses murder, kidnapping, or sexual assault, and says nothing, that silence should carry more weight than a ticket-level, $500 offense.

But the bill died.

Not because the law is good enough. It died because groups that work with victims raised concerns about the wording and potential unintended consequences, and the work needed to fix it was met with apathy.

Alaska law still fails to clearly distinguish between failure to report a violent crime and intentional concealment of a murder. Those are not the same thing, and pretending they are has consequences.

There is a world of difference between a person who fails to report a violent crime and a person who knows, or reasonably should know, that someone died by murder, has a safe chance to report it, and instead stays silent to keep that death from being discovered or investigated.

I have shared a draft bill with several legislators addressing concealment of murder. It creates a new criminal offense for someone who knowingly fails to report a death under circumstances showing an intent to prevent discovery or investigation.

That is not mere silence. That is concealment.

And it should be treated more seriously than Alaska law treats it now.

Under the current failure-to-report law, murder is lumped in with other violent crimes, even though the harm caused by intentionally keeping a homicide hidden is different in kind. A murder investigation can be delayed for months or years. Families can be left in the dark. Evidence can be lost.

Concealment of murder would remove murder from the existing framework of failure to report a violent crime and create a separate offense for concealment of murder, making it a class C felony. This creates a middle category that Alaska law does not currently have.

Right now, Alaska law can punish someone for actively helping an offender, hiding evidence, or tampering with a scene. But if someone intentionally keeps knowledge of a murder to themselves and does not cross one of those narrow lines, the law may have very little to say.

This gap is not theoretical. This loophole has had real consequences in Alaska. We have seen cases where silence delayed the truth and deepened harm. We have seen how slow disclosure shapes investigations and leaves victims’ families carrying the cost.

Recognizing that concealment of murder deserves its own category is a chance to modernize Alaska law.

Silence after a killing is not neutral, not when it protects the truth from coming out and not when it makes justice harder to reach. Alaska’s current law leaves room for people to sit on information after a homicide and face little or no meaningful consequences.

And currently, that is a policy choice.

Amber Batts is a member of the Community United for Safety and Protection (CUSP) in Alaska, which advocates for the rights and safety of sex workers and sex trafficking survivors.