N.C. Department of Correction--Correction News--February 1998

Corrections 2025

Raleigh - Picture a criminal justice community working together, sharing offender information electronically. Picture a corrections department that trains its staff through virtual reality technology, using laser technology for firearm training and non-lethal weapons for safety. Picture a department that incarcerates only the uncontrollable, violent offenders, placing its emphasis on intermediate punishment programs.

High-tech prisons, day incarceration centers, and the expansion of effective treatment and work programs for every offender is how members of the Futures Committee envision the next two decades.

Judges, district attorneys, victims, former inmates, prisoner advocates and correction officials met several times in 1997 to chart the course for the N.C. Department of Correction.

"The Futures meetings were dynamic," Correction Secretary Mack Jarvis said. "Looking ahead 25 years gave all of us renewed enthusiasm about the department's mission and how each employee can make substantial contributions in building the best, forward-thinking correctional system possible."

Here were some of the strategies for the future:

• Being more accessible to the public through employees speakers bureaus, county fairs, and open houses for probation and parole and prison facilities.
• Promoting communication between supervisors and employees by encouraging openness and directness and soliciting feedback.
• Using technology for offender management through drug screening, computerized inventory of services and offender tracking.
• Promoting savings by creating employee incentives for cost savings and waste reduction.
• Expanding offender work opportunities by bartering goods and services with other states, producing more consumable goods used by inmates, and expanding private sector programs in prison.
• Expanding DOC services by offering counseling to victims, providing photos via the internet to law enforcement agencies, providing Correctional Enterprise products to the needy, and working toward making the correction department a self-supporting agency.

Nicole Sullivan, who replaced Sandy Pearce as head of the Futures Project, and her staff will finalize the strategic plan and have it available the first of this year.

"Now, the task at hand is to implement these proposals and maintain the momentum to keep us moving ahead well into the 21st Century," Jarvis said. "This is an exciting time to be working in the Department of Correction, one that has already seen tremendous growth and progress and is seen as a model for the rest of the country."

NC DOC Correction News- February 1998
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