Fairbanks correctional officer charged with sexually assaulting inmate in transport van

A correctional officer has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman who was in his custody inside a state prisoner transport van, Alaska State Troopers say. Richard Johnson, 47, of Nenana, was booked Wednesday into the Fairbanks Correctional Center on a felony charge of third-degree sexual assault — the same facility where the woman he is accused of assaulting was held. The charge is an accusation, and Johnson is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Investigators say the assault happened in February 2024, while Johnson was on duty as a correctional officer, but the case did not open until June 2026 — more than two years later — and the arrest came about ten weeks after that. The state has not said what prompted the report. Johnson has no prior criminal case in Alaska, and the records available do not show whether he is still employed by the Department of Corrections, which has not addressed his status.

The case points to a gap the state's own oversight has flagged. Alaska prisons are audited under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, and the only such audit the corrections department publishes for Fairbanks dates to 2019. That review found the facility out of compliance on 18 standards; after a correction period, four were still unmet — among them the supervision and monitoring of inmates and the review of sexual-abuse incidents. Federal rules call for each facility to be audited every three years, but the department has published no newer audit for Fairbanks, and neither that audit nor its recent annual reports address the transport of inmates at all.

The department's own numbers record staff-on-inmate sexual-abuse allegations at Fairbanks in both 2024 and 2025, each classified as unfounded, along with one case at the facility still listed as open. The records do not show whether any of them is the case now before the court, and they contain no account from the woman.