Yanceyville, NC –NC has a new plan to help with overcrowded prisons and it may save taxpayers money.

The state is trying it out in the Piedmont, and Caswell County is one of the counties going through a pilot program, which starts next month. Report by digtriad.com.

It’s called the Statewide Misdemeanant Confinement Program. It involves where inmates serve their sentences.

Right now the law says for misdemeanors of 90 days or less, inmates generally serve the time in county jails. There are exceptions when the jail is overcrowded or the inmate presents security or medical risks.

In the new program under the Justice Reinvestment Act, those serving three to six month sentences will stay at county jails instead of going to Dept. of Correction.

The state reimburses the county for holding the extra inmates and providing care, supervision and transportation. The measure saves taxpayers about $40 per inmate per day.

That’s why Caswell County is building a bigger jail that can hold more inmates. Right now the jail holds 42 inmates. The new jail that will open in 2013 will hold 108 inmates.

Sheriff Michael Welch said the sheriff’s department jumped at the chance to take part in the pilot program.

“We actually have the ability to create some possibilities within our rural county and also alleviate some of the burdens on the taxpayers in the county,” said Sheriff Welch.

The sheriff told us the full program will take effect in January for all participating counties.

Tammy North Carolina, Overcrowding

Tim Moose, who has served as interim director of the state’s probation and parole system since January, was named to the director’s position Friday, according to WRAL.

“Tim has done an outstanding job in the past four months in his role as acting director and helped refocus our probation and parole system on the basics of good community supervision,” Secretary of Correction Alvin Keller said in a statement.

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North Carolina Governor Beverley Perdue’s budget plan had called for the closure of seven prisons.   Some may be saved however, as reported by the Asheville Citizen-Times.

State Senate budget writers released a spending plan Monday that would save money by boosting class sizes, giving fewer tests and prodding city school systems to fold … But after local protests, budget writers avoided three cuts that Gov. Bev Perdue proposed affecting how criminals are rehabilitated in the mountains.

Haywood Correctional Center, an aging minimum-security prison in Hazelwood, comes off the chopping block — for now. The prison is the only one west of Asheville. Corrections officials have been optimistic that its workers could be reassigned if it closes as proposed by Perdue, but Sen. John Snow said the distance would be too great.  “There wasn’t anywhere for those folks to go,” said Snow, a Murphy Democrat who co-chairs the budget subcommittee on public safety. “The 44 employees that would be lost, would be lost, period.”

The plan also spares Camp Woodson, a Buncombe County wilderness camp aimed at turning around the most serious offenders in the juvenile justice system; and the Young Offenders Forest Conservation Program, also known as the BRIDGE program, which sends young inmates in the adult corrections system to fight forest fires in the mountains. Four prisons in eastern and central North Carolina would close under the plan, down from seven in Perdue’s proposal to the General Assembly.

However, juvenile justice workers criticized other aspects of the Senate plan.

Also tapped for closing: two aging youth lockups that are close to new units and a number of programs that target at-risk youths, like the Center for the Prevention of School Violence. Juvenile Justice Secretary Linda Hayes called those “very shocking” cuts that could cripple public safety efforts.

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For years, minimum custody inmates have worked on raising flowers at the Guilford County prison farm near Gibsonville NC.  Story and video from MyFox8.com.

“We do anywhere between $50,000 and $60,000 in April,” said Captain Jack Johnson, with the Guilford Co. Sheriff’s Office. “May is a good month then it falls off and picks back up with our fall flowers.”   Profits from the sale of geraniums, impatients and other flowers go in to the county’s general fund.

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North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue’s roadmap for narrowing the state’s $3.4 billion budget gap for the coming year includes closing seven of the state’s 79 prisons, traditionally some of the biggest employers in rural areas.

On the chopping block in Perdue’s plan released Tuesday include the state’s smallest prison — housing just 36 women in Wilmington who go to work during the day and return to their lockup at night — and a century-old former tuberculosis sanitarium in Hoke County that for years has served as a sort of nursing home for elderly inmates.    While all seven are described as old, small, and inefficient, each will have advocates arguing that the state jobs they represent are too important for their communities to lose. Five of the seven prisons have been recommended to be mothballed since a top-to-bottom study of state operations 16 years ago. Each time, advocates won the argument of local jobs over statewide efficiency …

Closing all seven minimum-security prisons could cut 541 jobs — more than a hundred of those now vacant — or more than half of the 1,033 positions Perdue would ax from the state’s work force for the fiscal year starting July 1. The prison closings would save more than $24 million a year once completed in 2010.  Perdue’s budget recommends closing the Wilmington Residential Facility for Women in November and McCain Correctional Hospital in May 2010. She also recommended closing the Umstead, Gates, Haywood, Union and Guilford Correctional Centers by mid-2010. All but McCain and Guilford were recommended for closing by the Government Performance Audit Committee in 1992 … All but the Wilmington and Haywood cost more in 2008 than the $60.87 daily average cost for keeping an inmate in a minimum-security state prison, a Correction Department report said.

Lots more information in the article at the Seattle Times.

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Wayne County NC commissioners Tuesday are expected to be asked to find $121,255 in local dollars to continue a state-funded program that this past year saved the county some $1.2 million, but is now facing the state’s budget ax. Report from the Goldsboro News Argus.

The county has learned that the Criminal Justice Partnership Program is among state programs whose funding might be eliminated as Gov. Beverly Perdue looks for ways to fill a $2 billion budget shortfall.  The cut would jeopardize the county Day Reporting Center program that is designed to reduce the cost of operating the jail by placing defendants on programs such as electronic monitoring … The state’s $121,225 is used for contractual services, operating costs and a portion of the director and administrative assistant’s salary. Currently, the county provides $24,301, which covered the remaining part of salary and retiremen…

Center Director Theresa Barratt, in a written appeal to the board, said the program had saved the county just over $1.2 million based on incarceration costs and an additional $27,090 in jail fees.  People in the program are able to remain at work and those without jobs are required to perform volunteer work and they all take educational classes and work toward their GEDs.   Commissioners last month appropriated $16,535 to expand the electronic monitoring program.   At that time, Ms. Barratt told commissioners the units not only help relieve overcrowding at the jail, they will save the county a considerable amount of money — $4 per day per person versus about $45 to have a person sitting in jail.

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North Carolina should fix its broken probation system with expanded authority to search criminals without a warrant, better pay incentives for probation officers and lighter caseloads, Gov. Beverly Perdue said Friday, according to the Fort Mill Times.

The governor hopes the lighter caseloads will give probation officers a reasonable chance of managing the 112,000 people convicted of crimes but not sent to prison … Problems with probation oversight were highlighted last year after two men were charged in the slaying of University of North Carolina student body president Eve Carson, who was forced to make withdrawals from several ATMs before her death. The two men had received little attention from probation officers …

Perdue said she would ask the General Assembly to spend more than $25 million extra over the next two years and make other legal changes to:

• hire 117 probation and parole officers and 29 more supervisors;

• increase the pay of 1,048 probation and parole officers to help raise recruitment and retention;

• use federal stimulus funds to buy updated radios that allow parole and probation officers to communicate readily with other law enforcement officers;

• make juvenile records of offenders accessible to officers;

• make warrantless searches of probationers and their property a condition of every court order imposing probation as a sentence;

• continue to recruit probation and parole officers until every one of the approximately 120 vacant jobs is filled …

Perdue was asked how she would create prison space to handle an influx of probation violators at the same time that the recession-stricken state is forecasting the need to trim spending or raise revenues by $3.4 billion next year. She vowed to do whatever it takes to enforce probation conditions even if it meant crowding the prisons.  “We need to make offenders more responsible, especially for the bad decisions they make while on probation,” Perdue said. “Prison space is not going to be a reason.”

There is more detail in the excellent report at the Fort Mill Times.

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The Mecklenburg County NC Jail – North Annex isn’t currently housing inmates, but it will soon. Designers say the unique design of the facility allowed them to complete construction six months faster than average.  Story from News14-TV.

The facility is currently designed to hold 320 low-to-medium security inmates. The building has eight separate pods, with each pod to hold 40 inmates. Inmates will primarily remain in those pods, where they will eat, sleep, exercise and even have video conferencing with visitors.

Deputies say the new facility will make a big impact on the overcrowding issue in the county.   “Bottom line is those pods at the other facilities are not designed, they’re designed for 56 inmates. When you have 20-30 extra bodies, it’s stressful on the inmate and the officer,” explained Capt. Doug Smith of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office.  Smith says the new facility will also help the guards out, acting as a stress reliever because they won’t have to watch 20-30 extra inmates due to overcrowding. An opening date for the center has not been set.

News 14 has a 1:30 video covering this story.

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The Asheville Citizen-Times published an editorial on Friday suggesting that North Carolina DOC needed a longterm plan to meet a growing inmate population with shrinking budgets.   Some excerpts:

Here’s the math: Depending on the security level, it can cost up to nearly $100 million for a new 1,000-cell facility. North Carolina is approaching the end of a prison-building boom, with six large facilities opened since 2003.   Despite that, North Carolina’s prison population is expected to be about 1,000 over the number that can be housed judiciously, and projections estimate that by 2014 the prison population could stand at 46,000 — close to 4,000 beyond projected capacity. Housing a state prisoner costs more than $27,000 a year.   The rest of the equation: North Carolina is facing a budget shortfall of at least $2 billion.  That math, obviously, does not add up  …

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Rep. Carolyn Justus … inquired about having inmates double-bunked, but noted prison officials viewed that measure as a potential security risk. The paper reported Democratic Rep. Alice Bordsen and Sen. Joe Sam Queen … proposed a hard look at programs cutting recidivism and probation revocations. Also in the mix: A call to revamp the structured sentence concept, which in some cases rules out parole …

One potential pitfall that needs to be looked at very, very closely: Cutting programs designed to keep people who could, with a little nudging, be productive citizens instead of life-long wards of the corrections system. Those programs, ranging from juvenile justice programs on to the state’s mental health system, have long been targets of budgetary neglect. Cuts there, or in family services and, yes, in education, often can translate to more spending later in the corrections system …

The challenge for legislators is clear … Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, put it as plainly as it gets.  “If you do anything rational you are then soft on crime … (but) you can’t be tough on crime alone. You must also be smart on crime.”

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Construction of a prison for youth offenders in Wentworth NC could be one step closer after a meeting of top state officials today.

The Council of State, made up of the governor and nine other statewide elected officials, is due to accept a gift of about 20 acres from Rockingham County.  The land would be used for a 32-bed youth development center that would be run by the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention …

“It’s much more than just a prison in that it works for the kids with (mental health) counseling and they get their education there,” said department spokesman William Lassiter. “The whole purpose of it is much more therapeutic than you would think of in a normal prison setting … What we’re trying to do is build smaller facilities that are community-based.” That allows juvenile offenders to stay closer to home and lets members of the community volunteer to help mentor the young people.

More details in the Greensboro News-Record.

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