North Carolina

Overview

From 2010 to 2011, the CSG Justice Center worked with North Carolina state leaders to develop data-driven, consensus-based policy options designed to reduce corrections spending and increase public safety. CSG Justice Center experts interviewed stakeholders across the criminal justice system and conducted a comprehensive analysis of North Carolina’s criminal justice data to identify challenges facing the state:

• The state’s prison population was projected to grow by 10-percent in the next decade, costing $378 million to build and operate new prison beds
• Probation revocations accounted for 53 percent of prison admissions
• Only about 15 percent of people released from prison received post-release community supervision

The Justice Reinvestment Act was signed into law in 2011. North Carolina’s justice reinvestment legislation includes several policy options designed to address theses challenges. Among other things, the policy:

• Requires mandatory supervision of felony parolees (approximately an additional 15,000 offenders per year)
• Empowers probation officers to use swift and certain jail sanctions
• Increases sentences for repeat offenders of breaking and entering
• Diverts nonviolent, first-time felony drug offenders from prison using second chance incentives, saving both prison bed space and tax dollars

These policies are projected to save the state up to an estimated $293 million over six years in reduced spending and $267 in averted costs. The legislature reprioritized over $8 million in treatment funding in its FY 2012 budget to better target existing community-based treatment resources. The CSG Justice Center is providing technical assistance to North Carolina on the implementation of these policies.