North
Carolina Department of Correction
Western Youth Institution -
25 Years of Service
Correction Secretary Mack
Jarvis
(Western Youth Institution superintendent, 1975-1977)
| I’m glad to be here today to take
part in this event that Leon Morrow, Helen Harriger and
Bill Hall have organized for us. There are important
milestones in our lives. Graduations, weddings,
anniversaries and our children’s birthdays always
give us a chance to look at the passage of time. For
those of us who have looked at Western Youth Institution
as our home away from home, this anniversary is an
important marker for our careers. The
tall thin building that stands above the valley is
clearly different from the prisons many of us began our
careers in. I started in 1959 at the Caldwell unit in
Hudson and arrived here to help open Western in 1970.
As Bill Hartley describes in the
history of the prison he’s recently written, three
high rise prisons were to be built near Asheville, Burgaw
and Salisbury when Lee Bounds first proposed the concept
in 1967. The General Assembly funded construction of one
of these prisons and the decision was made to put it in
Burke County.
|
 |
Dr. James White who we are happy to have with
us today was named Western’s first superintendent. Our
planning team included George Greene, Tom Corley, Bob Smith,
Billy Cox and myself. We opened the prison in 1972.
To go along with the unique building, we
developed unique programming. Under the gradient system, newly
admitted inmates began imprisonment at Western on the 14th floor.
As they served time and followed rules, they moved to lower
floors with less restrictive environments. We also developed a
six-week training program to prepare and professionalize custody
staff. Early on, Western developed an important relationship with
Western Piedmont Community College. This prison was the first in
the state permitted to give GED tests.
The prison’s nationally recognized
Explorer’s Scouting Post was begun in 1973 with the help of
Leon Morrow, Western’s current superintendent. And in 1974,
Western became the state’s first prison with a
community-funded chaplain. Bill Hall was Western’s first
chaplain and has served here ever since.
After helping get Western up and running, I was
proud to be named superintendent in the mid-70s. My years at
Western were important to me. The lessons learned and the people
I worked with shaped my view of corrections and helped me seek to
shape the correction system we’re building together today.
Just as inmates were required to earn their way
from floor to floor of Western, today we’re holding inmates
across the state accountable. Our expectation is they will work
and seek to improve themselves.
Just as Western provides access to education,
concerned chaplains, an Explorer’s Post, DART’s alcohol
and chemical dependency treatment and BRIDGE’s forestry
program, we provide a wide range of opportunities for
incarcerated men and women to turn their lives around.
In the last four years, we’ve made
important changes in our correction system. We went to court,
leased space and built prisons to keep violent offenders in
prison longer. We’ve put an end to policies that eroded the
public’s faith in corrections. Under the state’s new
criminal sentencing law, parole is eliminated and
truth-in-sentencing means offenders serve the time the judge
announces in the courtroom.
Our ability to create new prison capacity
allowed paroles to be reduced from 24,000 in 1994 to 12,000 last
year. While we’ve regained control of the system, we’ve
also been able to creatively respond to new challenges.
More than 1,000 prisoners go to work for public
agencies each day helping to improve communities. The community
work program has provided cities and towns across the state with
free labor, while providing offenders a chance to give back to
their communities.
As we’ve worked to improve the correction
system, we’ve worked to make improvements in our
communities. Smart Start gives children an important chance to be
healthy and start school ready to learn. Gov. Hunt’s school
volunteer program, S-O-S, calls on all of us to give time to help
middle school children after school.
The call Gov. Hunt has launched to reach out to
our children is now being sounded across the country. If we want
to live in a better world, then we must reach out to those around
us. Improving our schools and giving a hand to at-risk youth will
make our communities better and our lives richer.
When I drove to work 25 years ago, Western
stood alone among these hills. As you round the curve today, you
also see Foothills Correctional Institution and the western boot
camp. These facilities now hold more than 1600 young men.
Our job is to reach each one of them and
provide them a chance to change their lives. That’s what Dr.
White did when we first opened Western 25 years ago. That’s
what Leon Morrow and his staff does today. And that’s what
the young men and women who serve as correction professionals
will do tomorrow.
I’m proud to have been a part of the team
that opened this prison 25 years ago. I’m glad to have the
chance to stand here today and thank you for all your hard work.
The men and women who have devoted their careers to working in
this prison have given so much of their lives to making our state
a better place. Think of the thousands of lives they’ve
touched. That is a tradition that will carry Western Youth
Institution into the future.
Western Youth
Institution
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