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Law

NC Staff Prison Shortages Mirror Nationwide Crisis

Photo of a prison cell.
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Prisons in North Carolina and nationwide are struggling with staff shortages.

North Carolina has been in the midst of a prison staffing crisis for years. In 2017, shortages at the Pasquotank Correctional Institution in Elizabeth City contributed to a violent escape attempt that left four prison workers dead.

Now, three state minimum-security correctional facilities have announcedthey will temporarily close to strengthen staffing at other facilities. More than 20% of correctional officer positions in the state’s 55 prisons are vacant. WUNC’s Capitol Bureau Chief Jeff Tiberii joins host Frank Stasio to discuss the closures. Joseph Neff, a staff writer with The Marshall Project, puts North Carolina’s staffing issues in a national context and shares his reporting on a Mississippi prison where a warden relied on gang leaders rather than staff to keep the peace.

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Laura Pellicer is a digital reporter with WUNC’s small but intrepid digital news team.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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