Is Alaska safe? (Anchorage, Fairbanks: violent crime, safe area, camping)

[haggardhouseelf]

Hubby has had a job offer in Alaska, I'm not sure if it's Anchorage or Fairbanks - both cities have been mentioned. I work with a lady who used to live in Alaska (Anchorage) and she is telling me horror stories. She told me that she wasn't safe walking alone down the city streets, that just about everyone carries a gun, that crime and drugs are bad. She said she was cornered by guys on multiple occassions (which is why she started carrying a gun). She said there are way more men than women there, and so as a woman you are constantly hit on and made to feel unsafe. She totally seemed like a normal person to me until she started talking about her experience living in Alaska - is what she says for real? I don't want to believe her, but to add to all of this my hubby and I Netflix binged Alaska State Troopers awhile back so that is about all we know or have seen of Alaska personally!! I love that show and your Troopers are heroes and bad-asses. If we do make it to Alaska I'm going to bake them cookies and bring them treats often! So how safe/dangerous are the major/larger cities in Alaska?

[norman_w]

an female friend said you have to have a gun . kodiak island.

[Parnassia]

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

Hubby has had a job offer in Alaska, I'm not sure if it's Anchorage or Fairbanks - both cities have been mentioned. I work with a lady who used to live in Alaska (Anchorage) and she is telling me horror stories. She told me that she wasn't safe walking alone down the city streets, that just about everyone carries a gun, that crime and drugs are bad. She said she was cornered by guys on multiple occassions (which is why she started carrying a gun). She said there are way more men than women there, and so as a woman you are constantly hit on and made to feel unsafe. She totally seemed like a normal person to me until she started talking about her experience living in Alaska - is what she says for real? I don't want to believe her, but to add to all of this my hubby and I Netflix binged Alaska State Troopers awhile back so that is about all we know or have seen of Alaska personally!! I love that show and your Troopers are heroes and bad-asses. If we do make it to Alaska I'm going to bake them cookies and bring them treats often! So how safe/dangerous are the major/larger cities in Alaska?

Safe? Define safe. It's relative. Like any city there will be safer areas and less safe areas. FWIW watching a heavily edited tv show about AK law enforcement is hardly going to give you a balanced view of life here. TV producers love to present AK as a distorted version of the lawless wild west. With the plethora of emergency responder/LE shows these days they are only going to show the more extreme situations...otherwise no one would watch. That being said, I don't live in Anchorage or Fairbanks. I've traveled to both numerous times over the years and have never been cornered or hit on. You can make yourself appear a good victim just as you can anywhere else. I do not carry a gun unless I'll be hiking/camping in bear country.

Get more information about the job; including where it would be. Those two cities are quite different. Contact the company and employees who actually live where he'd be working as well as realtors to find out what its like and what areas to avoid. IMHO there are lots of reasons a move to either city should be considered very carefully. Safety from crime is probably not the most important.

[Arktikos]

Anchorage 49% female and Fairbanks is 46%.

Edit: Wandering the rough areas of Anchorage, percent male to female will be highly skewed towards males.

[rntim]

There are several "great" tv shows out there about Alaska...all a bunch of crap. Watching them is not how you "learn" about Alaska.

[AKStafford]

How safe is it? If you are hanging out in sketchy bars in downtown Anchorage? Not very safe.
Living a normal, productive life? Pretty safe.

[Northrick]

I'll chime in as a 25 year Anchorage resident. Stay out of Mountain View, Fairview, and parts of Muldoon and you are unlikely to have a problem. There's some sketchy bars downtown I'd avoid too but you can certainly enjoy an evening downtown without a gun and without being cornered.


My wife typically walks 4 miles a day, has never carried a gun and has never been bothered. Yes, the statistics for the city are bad, no denying that, but it's not hard at all to avoid being a statistic.


As far as women to men, your friend must have a selective eye because my observation is that it is about even, which aligns with the 49% to 51% stat Arktikos posted.

[Music_Man]

46 years in Anchorage and Northrick is right on the money!

[Frostnip]

Asking if Alaska is safe is like asking if Los Angeles is safe. Your level of risk is very much elevated or lowered depending on where you are, who are are, and what you're doing. There's high highs and low lows depending on various factors.

That said, statistical analyses have shown Anchorage in particular does have a significantly higher rate of stranger-on-stranger violence than the US as a whole, so some extra habitual vigilance there is definitely called for. (In the US, your biggest risk by far of being a victim of violent crime comes from people you know - abusive ex, unhinged coworker, whatever - this is still true in Anchorage, but it's less true, which can make it harder to control your risk by controlling who you associate with.)

Fairbanks is a much smaller and more settled community and the crime problems are commensurately smaller (and weirder, in some cases).

As a woman I don't feel unsafe or hassled in Alaska, but then again, I previously lived in Russia and Milwaukee, so my baseline isn't exactly Mayberry, lol.

[slowlane3]

813 per 100,000. That means a 1/120 chance of being a victim of violence in a given year....or about a 70% chance of being a victim of violence sometime in your whole lifetime (if a person lives in Anchorage their whole life, and if the rate remains the same).