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North Carolina Governor’s 2024 Executive Order on Reentry

On January 29, 2024, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper signed an Executive Order joining the national Reentry 2030 initiative. What’s the Reentry 2030 initiative? According to the Reentry 2030 website, the initiative is being led by the Correctional Leaders Association, The Council of State Governments Justice Center, and JustLeadershipUSA. It describes the program as an … Read more

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New Resource on Employment Outcomes for People Leaving Prison

The North Carolina Department of Commerce has created a new online tool called The NC Reentry Outcome Reporting System. The tool shows employment outcomes for people leaving the state prison system. The numbers are sobering. I had a chance to talk to one of the tool’s architects, Andrew Berger-Gross, Senior Economist at the Department’s Labor … Read more

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The Role of Administrative Traffic Offenses in the North Carolina Criminal Justice System

This post explores the large role that administrative traffic offenses play in the state’s criminal justice system. The Lab’s Measuring Justice Dashboard shows that non-violent misdemeanor charges make up the bulk of the state system (Figure 1). Figure 1. Composition of Charges in the State System, 2021 Figure Note: DWI refers to impaired driving offenses. … Read more

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Updated Model Local Bail Policy

The North Carolina General Statutes require the senior resident superior court judge to issue a local bail policy, in consultation with the chief district court judge or judges. G.S. 15A-535(a). At the Criminal Justice Innovation Lab, we’ve had a lot of requests for help updating these policies. And we understand why. Doing this work is … Read more

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Measuring Justice Dashboard: New Court Non-Appearance Metric

We recently updated our Measuring Justice Dashboard with a new metric on court non-appearance. As with all Dashboard metrics, you can explore the data at the state and county level. Here’s a quick summary of what you’ll see on the Dashboard’s new metric. But if you want to get right to it, click here to access the Dashboard directly.

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New Criminal Charging Metric on the Measuring Justice Dashboard

As blog readers know, the UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab has been developing a Measuring Justice Dashboard. Last year we released our Dashboard first metrics: Citation v. Arrest and Summons v. Warrant. We recently released a new Dashboard metric: Criminal Charging. In this post I’ll give some highlights of that tool. But in case you want to get right to it, you can access the Dashboard from the Lab’s web page (https://cjil.sog.unc.edu/); from the main page, click on “Measuring Justice.”

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Updated Model Local Bail Policy

The North Carolina General Statutes require the senior resident superior court judge to, in consultation with the chief district court judge or judges, issue a local bail policy. G.S. 15A-535(a). But doing so is no easy matter given the many statutory rules and exceptions and areas for discretionary policy choices. Christopher Tyner and I have tried to facilitate that task, with a North Carolina Model Local Bail Policy. We first issued the Model Policy in the Spring and we just posted an updated version, incorporating the latest legislative changes to the state’s bail statutes. The Model Policy can be found here; it’s the first item under “Implement.” Read on for details.

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Model Implementation Plan for New First Appearances Required by S.L. 2021-138

I recently posted, on the UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab website, a model implementation plan designed to help stakeholders comply with S.L. 2021-138. That law requires first appearances for all in-custody defendants within 72 hours after the defendant is taken into custody or at the first regular session of district court in the county, whichever occurs first. The new law becomes effective December 1, 2021 and applies to criminal processes served on or after that date.

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NC Court Appearance Project: Introducing Our Sites

We recently invited North Carolina jurisdictions to apply to participate in the NC Court Appearance Project. The project is supported by the UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab and The Pew Charitable Trusts. We’re excited to announce our three project sites: New Hanover, Orange, and Robeson Counties. We will be supporting stakeholders in these jurisdictions as they examine the scope and impact of missed court dates and explore ways to improve court appearance rates and responses to missed court dates. Each site has a project team composed of local judges, the DA, the Public Defender or a defense representative, the sheriff, the clerk of court and other officials. Because we’re interested to help stakeholders explore solutions that can work across diverse jurisdictions, we’re happy to have participation from an urban county, a suburban county, and a rural county. Thanks to everyone that applied—we wish we could have included all of you!

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