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After Last Call: Preventing Harm in Alaska’s Nightlife

Kat Reichert, CLA Public Information Office
November 14, 2025
cla-pio@alaska.edu

Associate Professor Ingrid Johnson has a new article in Victims & Offenders: “Exploring Nightlife Professionals' Ideas for and Perspectives on Sexual Violence Prevention in Nightlife Settings.” Her project listens closely to the people who keep bars and clubs running—bartenders, managers, security staff—and to community partners who work alongside them. Together, they map practical steps for preventing harm long before a crisis hotline rings. 

Johnson says one moment in the focus groups stopped her in her tracks: “One thing that surprised me was people working in bars and clubs emphasizing the importance of stopping nightlife settings from over-serving alcohol.” She expected that from the police or advocates. Hearing it from within the industry, though, “demonstrates a willingness among nightlife professionals to prioritize people over profits.” That candor, naming both the realities of business and the responsibility to patrons, threads through the study.

Participants generated twelve prevention strategies across three classic prevention frames: guardianship, reducing motivated offenders, and hardening targets. One idea kept resurfacing. “Although the idea is not new, the strategy that stood out to me was the importance of safe rides home from nightlife settings, and all these different ways that these could be provided,” Johnson explains. Leaving a venue can be a vulnerable moment; limited taxis and ride shares, cost barriers, winter cold, and intoxication can combine to create risk. Training staff to proactively connect patrons to reliable transportation, she notes, “has the potential to curb some of the most serious sexual violence associated with nightlife settings.” Still, the study makes clear that putting prevention into practice isn’t simple—profit margins, staffing levels, and turnover can slow good intentions, while partnerships, training, and clear policies help turn ideas into lasting routines.

Back on campus, the research is already finding a second life in the classroom. Johnson has been using examples from the project throughout her Research Methods course, walking students through real-world decisions about study design, ethics, and analysis. “It was exciting to share this product with them this week as a real-life example of how the research process unfolds from start to finish,” she says. For her students, the publication offers a glimpse into how research can start as a question and grow into something that reaches well beyond the classroom.

Johnson is deliberate about next steps: “This research was a qualitative, exploratory project that just sought to understand more about the diversity of these strategies and the perceived barriers and catalysts to implementing them.” To learn what actually sticks, she plans a larger survey to gauge readiness among owners and staff, followed by an evaluation of any strategies put in place. It’s careful, steady work—exactly the kind that turns promising ideas into lasting change.

The UAF Department of Justice offers a BA in Justice, an MA in Justice Administration, and an accelerated BA-to-MA pathway that blends theory with real-world application. Students learn from faculty who are active researchers and community partners across Alaska. UAF’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program complements that work through courses that explore identity, power, and social change—equipping students to think critically, engage compassionately, and contribute to meaningful conversations about justice and equality in Alaska and beyond.