Cuts To NC DOC Get Closer
Budget cuts that would close prisons and eliminate some creative ways of dealing with crime moved a step closer to reality Thursday. Report from the Asheville Citizen-Times.
House budget writers unveiled a series of proposals for cuts in the justice system, the latest piece in their attempt to deal with a more than $4 billion budget shortfall without raising taxes. They proposed closing eight prisons, including Haywood Correctional Center, which would shut down by Oct. 1 under the plan. Other cuts would end or reduce funding for programs to keep youths and adults from heading to prison, or deal with them in ways other than locking them up. Camp Woodson in Buncombe County and other wilderness camps for troubled youths would shut down …
Another cut would end funding in the corrections budget for the BRIDGE program. The program sends young prison inmates to the mountains to fight forest fires. They do other work, too. Inmates headed out to Madison County on Thursday to repair a footbridge that had washed away in the recent heavy rains, closing off access to an elderly couple’s property, said Keith Suttles, assistant camp director with the state forest service. “People don’t realize that resource won’t be there to do those things,” Suttles said …
Another program that offers troubled youths the chance at wilderness adventures, Spruce Pine-based Project Challenge, would lose $40,000, 25 percent of its annual state funding for administrative costs. The nonprofit takes youths in 34 counties into the woods and into communities to serve at places like churches, food pantries and hospitals.
These are just extracts from a much longer article in the Asheville Citizen-Times.
Uncategorized