North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

I recently completed a new paper on contracts between cities and sheriffs for law enforcement services. It is available here.

Dozens of North Carolina municipalities have decided not to operate their own police departments, and instead have entered into contracts with their local sheriffs’ offices for designated levels of law enforcement services. There are plusses and minuses to such arrangements, which the paper details. It also notes some of the terms that parties considering such contracts may wish to include, and discusses the formalities required for each side to enter into such agreements.

Today’s post discusses two recent federal cases involving the use of Tasers in North Carolina jails. (The post draws from an article I originally prepared for the North Carolina Jail Administrators’ Association newsletter.)

The Statewide Misdemeanant Confinement Program took a hit this week in the court of appeals. In Richmond County Board of Education v. Cowell, about half of the money that comes into the program fund—the $50 fee for anyone found responsible for an improper equipment violation—was deemed to be punitive. Under the North Carolina Constitution, the money must therefore go to the public schools.

Sometimes a person who is already incarcerated for one crime needs to be prosecuted for another crime. A surprisingly common question, usually from a sheriff’s office, is who is responsible for getting the defendant-inmate to trial? The county that wants the inmate (the requesting county)? Or the county that has the inmate (the custodial county)?

North Carolina inmates are not allowed to have tobacco products, and other people are not allowed to give tobacco products to them. This session, the legislature changed the law—twice—to address […]

Last week I wrote about how jails sometimes seek to limit medical expenses by having an inmate released. Today’s post is about the related issue of “refusing” an inmate on […]