so what do they have instead of counties....thought only Louisiana called them parishes and the rest called them counties???
Alaska has 18 boroughs instead of counties. (NYC has 5 boroughs, but that is the division of one county/city.)
The borough of Anchorage is tiny by Alaskan standards, yet it contains about half the population of the state. And, just like all the other boroughs, it contains a lot of wilderness. Some homes are out there - off the grid and road system.
So, we have cities and towns. These can be collected into an entity known as a municipality. This (I guess) is designed to deal with the issues and concerns of modern civilization while ignoring all that wilderness. It is not a loose grouping. The municipality can be in charge of fire and rescue, road maintenance, police, animal control, and so on.
But the "Anchorage Police" are really the Municipality of Anchorage Police. They are not borough (county) police even though this borough is also called Anchorage. They are not police just for the city of Anchorage either. This is not always the case in all the boroughs since most are sparsely populated and don't have any cities or towns on the road system. So, the rest of the USA (except Louisiana) has counties - Alaska has one or two replacements for counties, depending on where you live up here.
I'm not sure if the prison is municipality or borough up here - luckily I've managed to avoid any personal experience in that area. I will just have to be more careful and not drop my cell phone into the toilet. I had no idea they were so strict up here!
cn
