Alaska's court security funding ranks 68th among 94 federal district lines

Federal funding for court security officers in Alaska will total about $3.8 million for fiscal 2026, ranking the state 68th among 94 funded district lines nationwide, well below the national average of roughly $6 million.

The award covers Oct. 1, 2025, through Sept. 30, 2026. Metropolitan Security Services, a Chattanooga, Tennessee, company, holds the contract, numbered 15M10525FD0626CSO, and has held the Alaska contract in every year the records cover. The award lists Anchorage as its place of performance, the database field naming where the work is done.

Nationally, the Marshals Service recorded 94 court security officer funding actions for fiscal 2026, none of them at zero, totaling about $562.7 million. A funding action is a recorded obligation against a district's contract line. The national median is about $5 million, below the average because a few large districts pull it up.

Within the Ninth Circuit, which includes Alaska and eight other western states and territories, 14 district lines total about $109.5 million. Alaska ranks 12th of those 14. Only Hawaii, at about $2.4 million, and one other line, at about $1.4 million, rank lower. The largest line in the circuit is about $20.2 million.

Alaska's line has grown about 15 percent over three fiscal years, though not every year. The total was about $3.3 million in fiscal 2023 and $3.63 million in fiscal 2024. It slipped to $3.60 million in fiscal 2025, then reached about $3.8 million in fiscal 2026.

The fiscal 2025 action carries the same Alaska district description as the others, but the database codes its place of performance to Tennessee. The records do not explain that, and the pattern suggests one: district lines across several circuits carry Tennessee for the same year, including two of the Ninth Circuit lines above, and Tennessee is where the contractor is based. The field appears to follow the company rather than the courthouse.

Payments appear against the older awards. About $3 million was paid on the fiscal 2023 award and about $3.2 million on the fiscal 2024 award. The records show no payments yet against the fiscal 2026 award, and none against any fiscal 2025 or fiscal 2026 court security line in the country, so the lag is national rather than local.

Federal spending records show no money yet recorded for court security officers at the US District Court for the District of Alaska in the fiscal year that begins Thursday, Oct. 1, and none recorded for any other federal court district in the country. That is the expected state of the listings before a year starts. The US Marshals Service has opened 69 funding actions for fiscal 2027 on USAspending, the federal government's public spending database, each listed at $0.00, and Alaska's line is one of them. Alaska has not been singled out. Fiscal 2026 had 94 funded lines, so 25 districts have no fiscal 2027 record yet. The records do not show whether the federal judiciary's budget for fiscal 2027 has been enacted, or when money will be recorded against the district lines.

The records contain no statement from the Marshals Service, the federal courts, or the contractor. No agency published an explanation alongside the listings. These entries are line items, not announcements. The records also do not show how many security officers the Alaska contract pays for. They do not show how officers are assigned among the district's court locations in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Ketchikan and Nome.

The same public database will show whether money is recorded against Alaska's line, and against the other 68, in the days after the year turns.