The head of North Carolina’s prison system sounded the alarm at a legislative committee meeting Thursday about dangerous conditions created by lack of staff, a problem exacerbated by the failure of state lawmakers to approve raises for correctional workers.
“Our staffing situation is dire and it’s dangerous,” said Leslie Cooley Dismukes, secretary of the state Department of Adult Correction. “Dangerous to my staff, dangerous to the people in my custody, and dangerous to the people of North Carolina.”
The state doesn’t pay enough to attract enough correctional officers, she said.
Starting pay for correctional officers in North Carolina is the second-lowest in the nation at $37,621 a year, Dismukes told the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Justice & Public Safety. The average starting salary in southern states is $45,594. Nationwide, the average starting salary is $52,142.
“If we do not address these issues, something bad will happen,” she said. “It is not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when.”
Staff shortages were at the root of the deadly inmate escape attempt at Pasquotank Correctional Center in 2017 where four staff members were murdered. A federal report said understaffing at the prison was so bad that workers cut corners with safety procedures.
All the prisons were better staffed in 2017 than they are today, Dismukes said after the meeting.
“It just takes one bad thing to happen that detrimentally affects someone’s life, someone’s health,” she said.
Officers have been assaulted, but fortunately, none have been killed recently, Dismukes said.
“But it can happen,” she added. “It can particularly happen when you do not have enough people to maintain the order of the prison, and that’s where we’re operating right now. So, it is really dangerous.”
Gov. Josh Stein proposed 6.5% pay increases for correctional officers in the budget he proposed last year. The state Senate approved salary increases for correctional officers that would have brought the base starting pay to about $40,000 a year.
The legislature did not pass a comprehensive budget, so state employees have not received raises.
In addition to staffing problems, the department needs to replace fire safety systems at a number of prisons.
Six prisons need significant upgrades or replacements and are on “active fire watch,” which means an employee must walk through the prison looking for smoke, Dismukes said. Another seven prisons have obsolete systems and may soon be put on fire watch.
The prisons have been using money from lapsed salaries to pay bills. Even so, the agency ended up with $89 million in unpaid invoices at the end of the 2025 fiscal year last June..
Committee members appeared to welcome Dismukes’ candid assessment of the agency’s challenges.
“Appreciate hearing all this,” said state Sen. Buck Newton (R-Wilson). “We look forward to working with our counterparts in the House to see if there’s some ways that we can really impact some of these issues that we’re having.”
Another agency told the committee that it’s running low on money and will soon have to scale back its GPS ankle-monitoring program for people charged with domestic violence.
The Criminal Justice Information Network, or CJIN, says it needs more than $4 million to maintain current operations.
Courts can order people accused of crimes to wear GPS tracking monitors as part of their pre-trial release terms. CJIN oversees a system where victims and defendants are alerted when they are close to one another. Victims are called when defendants are within 300 feet, said CJIN Executive Director LaVonda Fowler.
CJIN had 1,391 GPS trackers in the field as of last week. But without additional money, it will be able to operate only about 400 trackers through June 30, Fowler told the committee.
Chief District Court Judge Galen Braddy of Pitt County vouched for the program.
“I put it in every domestic violence case I’ve got,” he said. “This is great money because the money that’s being spent is money that’s saving lives.”
The agency wants a permanent place in the state budget.
The General Assembly is not expected to return to work on a state spending plan for months.
After her presentation, Fowler said CJIN would need to start cutting the monitors in use “pretty soon,” but as of now, she said, there is no plan for how to do it.
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