“Dire” and “dangerous.” Those were the words used by Leslie Cooley Dismukes, the secretary of the Department of Adult Corrections, during her January briefing to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Justice and Public Safety, to describe the correctional officer shortage plaguing North Carolina prisons. This grim warning should be heeded by state lawmakers as they consider recommended salary increases for the brave men and women tasked with keeping our prisons safe and ensuring inmates don’t reoffend when they return to our communities.
Secretary Dismukes words are not embellishments of the truth: North Carolina prisons are truly in crisis, and have been for some time. At the end of 2025, there were approximately 32,500 inmates across 55 prisons in the state, about 700 more than in 2024. This comes at a time when North Carolina has 38 fewer correctional officers than in 2024, leaving valuable bed space “suspended” and unusable because there aren’t enough officers to safely monitor them. In fact, there are 1,387 fewer beds “online” than in 2024, where they had already suspended 2,894 beds for that year. Some prisons have correctional officer vacancies over 50%.
The consequences of officer shortages have already been felt in this state. In 2017, an investigation by The Charlotte Observer found that when inmates outnumber corrections officers by significant margins, opportunities for bringing contraband into prisons, including drugs and weapons, increase dramatically. It also increases the likelihood that a correctional officer or other prison employee will be seriously injured or killed.
The truth of that investigation played out tragically in 2017 at the Pasquotank Correctional Institute. Just one officer was monitoring 30 inmates in a sewing plant, when several inmates tried to escape, using hammers and scissors to beat correctional officers and staff. Four prison staff members died, and eight more were injured. The prison had a third of its positions vacant at the time.
In April 2017, another corrections officer was killed by an inmate at Bertie County Correctional Institution. Data from 2018 showed that four assaults occurred every day in North Carolina prisons, with 227 employees and 349 inmates attacked in the first five months alone. According to disciplinary infractions data collected by North Carolina prison officials for Fiscal Year 2023-2024, there were 507 incidents of staff being assaulted and 955 assaults with a weapon. There was an 8% increase in infractions overall from the previous year.
Shortages strain existing officers, requiring them to work more hours and in more dangerous conditions. Officers sometimes do not know when their shift will end and are routinely required to work 16- or 20-hour shifts. This amount of overtime cost $73.5 million last year. They are often called in on their days off as well. This comes as North Carolina pays the second-lowest salaries for corrections officers nationwide. The average starting salary for officers is $37,621, nearly $8,000 lower than in bordering and neighboring states on average. Virginia pays over $10,000 more, Tennessee nearly $14,000 more, and South Carolina $7,000 more. It’s no wonder there was a 24% turnover rate for officer positions in 2025: they are getting burned out in a job that reduces their life expectancy. There is a PTSD rate higher than that of military veterans, and a suicide rate 40% higher than that of the rest of working-age people.
This also has negative impacts on re-offending and community safety. Less staff means less available bandwidth to implement education and vocational training, which has shown to be effective in reducing recidivism, lowering the chances that someone commits another crime when they are released from prison. A 2016 RAND study showed that inmates who participate in programming while incarcerated are 43% less likely to commit another crime and return to prison. They are also more likely to find employment after their release, becoming taxpayers rather than a burden on the tax system.
In 2018, Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, a critically important piece of legislation that significantly expanded recidivism-reducing programs available to federal inmates and allowed some to earn time off their prison sentences for participating in these programs. The most recent data from the Council on Criminal Justice, an independent, nonpartisan organization, show that individuals released under the First Step Act had a recidivism rate 55% lower than those released prior to the First Step Act with similar risk profiles and time in the community.
Unfortunately, the most recent data from North Carolina show that 44% of prisoners are rearrested and a third are reincarcerated within two years of release. We can and must do better. It starts with recruiting and retaining more corrections officers and staff, which will only happen with better pay. We urge the legislature this year to increase compensation for North Carolina corrections officers and staff before another tragedy occurs.