Beverly Eaves Perdue
Governor

Alvin W. Keller Jr.
Secretary

North Carolina Department of Correction

Black Mountain Substance Abuse Treatment Center for Women Opens

BLACK MOUNTAIN - The N.C. Department of Correction has strengthened its alcohol and drug addiction treatment programs with a new residential center dedicated to helping females on probation and parole.

Governor Beverly Perdue helped open the Black Mountain Substance Abuse Treatment Center for Women at a dedication event today. Numerous other state, regional and local officials, as well as private treatment providers, attended the ceremony.

“Alcohol and drug addiction are major contributors to criminal behavior,” said Correction Secretary Alvin Keller. “This facility will give us a new tool to reduce crime and recidivism among women, getting them treatment they need before they end up in prison.”

Females are one of the fastest growing segments of the state’s prison population, and about half of yearly prison admissions are the result of probation revocations.  A residential treatment center in Goldsboro has served male probationers and parolees for more than two decades, but a similar facility for women had not been available.

That changed May 10 when the Department of Correction and its Division of Alcoholism and Chemical Dependency Programs finished converting the former Black Mountain women’s prison to a treatment center and began admitting residents.

Black Mountain Substance Abuse Treatment Center for Women is a 50-bed facility providing clinical substance abuse treatment for female probationers and parolees. It will ultimately serve as many as 200 residents a year, using a 90-day program.

Some of the residents are probationers whose court judgments ordered them to attend the treatment program. Other women at the center are former inmates on parole who are seeking to re-enter society successfully. 

The center, funded through state legislation, is a long-awaited response to requests for such a facility from judges, legislators and probation officers.

The relocation of the former Black Mountain Correctional Center for Women inmates to Swannanoa in 2008 made a facility available for the new substance abuse treatment center. The center has 36 staff members.

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North Carolina Department of Correction
Public Information Office     4202 Mail Service Center     Raleigh NC 27699-4202
Phone (919) 716-3700      Fax: (919) 716-3795     www.doc.state.nc.us