By Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi
The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C.
RALEIGH, N.C. — The leader of the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction warned lawmakers Thursday that the state’s correctional staffing situation was “dire” and “dangerous” and that more funding is needed.
The call for more funding comes as North Carolina lawmakers in the GOP-led legislature have been unable to reach an agreement on a new budget for the fiscal year that began in June. They’re not expected back until April.
“Our staffing situation is dire and it is dangerous, dangerous to my staff, dangerous to the people in my custody, and dangerous to the people of North Carolina,” said Leslie Cooley Dismukes, who became secretary of the Department of Adult Correction on Jan. 1, 2025.
“Our vacancy rate is higher and remains at unsustainable levels, leaving us with fewer staff to run safe prisons. This problem has compounded year over year, as salaries of our employees have not kept up with the cost of living, much less the market rate,” she said during a joint legislative oversight committee meeting on justice and public safety.
Experts put the base living wage in North Carolina at about $17 to $22 an hour for childless, single workers, or around $25 an hour for single workers with one child, Dismukes said. But she said the best the department can offer a starting correctional officer is about $9 an hour.
“Our peers and surrounding states pay more. The police pay more. The sheriffs pay more, and often, even fast food restaurants pay more,” she said.
“We need your help, and we need it now. I’m here today to answer your questions and to provide information, but I’m also here to sound the alarm,” she told lawmakers. “If we do not address these issues immediately, something bad will happen. It is not a question of if. It is a question of when.” Growing prison population, high turnover
Dismukes said the agency has a $2.1 billion budget and about 14,000 employees. It operates 55 prisons plus two probation and parole violations facilities with over 32,000 people in custody, and has community supervision offices in all 100 counties.
North Carolina’s incarcerated population has been steadily growing, with admissions outpacing releases by more than 50 people per month on average over the past year, she said. Projections for June 2025 estimated the prison population would be just over 31,000 people, but the actual number exceeded 32,000. She said the increase in inmates, paired with staffing shortages, has reduced the number of beds that can be safely operated.
“What that leads to, as the sheriffs and former sheriffs in the room know, is a jail backlog,” she said.
That’s when county jails have people who should be transferred to state prison, but can’t be moved quickly.
Dismukes said the department hired 2,647 employees last year, but lost 2,483 over the same period. She said the department had a 24% turnover rate among correctional officer positions in calendar year 2025.
At the January meeting for the Southern Region of the Correctional Leaders Association, Gov. Josh Stein said more than a third of North Carolina’s correctional officer positions are unfilled and some facilities have vacancies that exceed 50%, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Dismukes also updated lawmakers on fire safety systems, facility conditions and inmate medical costs:
- Fire alarm replacement projects have either been completed or are underway at 16 prison facilities. But Dismukes said the department still needs more than $23 million to address immediate fire-safety needs at priority facilities on fire watch or intermittent fire watch. In a fire watch facility, an employee must walk the floors of the prison looking for smoke or fire to keep people incarcerated safe because the safety systems don’t alert them, Dismukes said. She added that in many of these prisons, the fans and carbon monoxide detectors are not working.
- * A facility condition assessment found about $1.7 billion in deferred maintenance needs. Dismukes said they may be able to get that down to about $1.4 billion. Some facilities may need to be closed, but that would require further research to determine, she said.
- The health services budget was $362 million, but inmate medical needs ended last year $82.5 million short, leaving $52.5 million unpaid and carried into the next fiscal year, she said. “I will tell you that our projections, the medical situation, hasn’t changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse, and our projections are that we will be at least this much (in the hole), if not more, at the end of this fiscal year. So it’s compounding,” Dismukes said.
To meet funding shortfalls, “we take every bit of lapsed salary, every single bit of it, and put it back into our operating budget,” she said.
North Carolina state jobs produced $1 billion in lapsed salaries — funds budgeted for positions that were not filled — according to reports by the state auditor’s office. Agencies sometimes use lapsed salaries to fill funding holes.
“It goes to cover medical payroll, overtime, specialty pay and bonuses, repairs, food, clothing, equipment,” she said. GPS ankle monitors
During the hearing Thursday, lawmakers also heard updates on a widely used GPS ankle-monitoring program aimed at preventing crimes. The program needs more funding, according to its leader.
The program, run through the North Carolina Criminal Justice Information Network, uses GPS ankle monitors to track, in real time, the location of people in pretrial release accused of crimes such as stalking, sexual assault and domestic abuse. The program alerts victims if the defendant comes too close. If a defendant violates a court order by entering a certain zone — such as the victim’s home, workplace or school — law enforcement can be dispatched.
The program was initially launched as a pilot known as “Caitlyn’s Courage,” funded with an appropriation of nearly $3.5 million in COVID-19 relief funds in 2020. Caitlyn’s Courage, a nonprofit, was formed in 2019 by Beth and Judson Whitehurst of Pitt County after their daughter, Caitlyn, was killed in a domestic violence-related murder-suicide.
In 2021, the program was passed on to CJIN, which is overseen by a board appointed by state lawmakers that includes law enforcement leaders, magistrates, county commissioners and judges.
The nonprofit Caitlyn’s Courage faced scrutiny in 2024, including a federal grand jury subpoena seeking records tied to its original launch and its receipt of COVID-19 funds, The News & Observer reported.
Pitt County Chief District Court Judge Galen Braddy told lawmakers about how in the 2000s, a county sheriff’s deputy confronted a woman as she was walking to the door of her home and shot and killed her. The deputy had earlier been charged with stalking but released on bail, he said.
“And I think back in time, I say, how much was her life worth?” he said.
Some electronic monitoring programs have existed for years, he said, but they often come with limits and may only be used in the county where a defendant lives. He said this system is broader, allowing defendants to be monitored even if they leave the state.
“As a judge, I have never been given a tool like this that created a looking glass, a crystal ball,” he said.
LaVonda Fowler, executive director of the North Carolina Criminal Justice Information Network, said the program “is a real time system. It’s not passive.”
“There are actual people that watch dots move, and when they get too close, we contact the victim and the defendant,” she said.
Fowler said the program is used in 63 counties and has a 6% violation rate — meaning about 6% of people on the program have violated their orders. She said historically, roughly 66% of protective orders in domestic violence cases are violated. It is not used in Wake and Durham, according to a presentation shown. Fowler said the intent was to have it statewide but that more funding was needed.
She said the program currently has less than $873,000 left for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in June.
“What that means is that the program is not sustainable. At the current rate, we’ll have to drop it to approximately 400 units in the field today, and right now we have 1,400,” she said.
Fowler said the board is asking lawmakers to appropriate $4 million yearly.
The Department of Public Safety has provided temporary funding, “but it’s not sustainable for them,” she said.
The board is also seeking funding for one additional full-time position. Fowler said she is the only full-time employee, though the program contracts out services such as 24/7 call center response. She said there is another full-time position available, but it is vacant.
To complete statewide implementation, the board said the program would need another $4 million, bringing annual funding to $11.5 million.
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