Pilot program aims to ease NC prison staffing crisis

As North Carolina’s prison system continues to struggle with staffing shortages, the Department of Adult Correction (NC DAC) and the Office of State Human Resources have launched a pilot program to recruit and retain correctional officers.

At a press conference Wednesday, Gov. Josh Stein said North Carolina ranks 49th nationally in correctional officer pay, a level he linked to staffing shortages that have left the state prison system operating at roughly half its needed workforce.

State lawmakers, in a budget framework announced May 12, acknowledged the issue facing state corrections facilities and said they plan to include a 15.4% salary increase for correctional officers in a proposal currently under negotiation.

Captain Derrick Simmons of the Neuse Correctional Facility, Goldsboro, has worked in corrections for 28 years. He spoke at Stein’s news conference about how difficult he thinks it is to keep the staff and prisoners safe compared to just 10 years ago.

“Ten years ago, it was routine to have about 28 officers and five sergeants on shift,” he said. “At lineup today, we may see seven or eight officers and three sergeants on shift… Having fewer people working inside the institution means that more things that you cannot see and cannot prevent, things that you would not want to go on, they happen.”

Simmons said that includes assaults, extortion among offenders, and violence all increases. Without correctional officers providing security, he said educational and rehabilitation programs cannot happen, trips outside the prison for medical departments get delayed, and people are not as well prepared to be successful upon their release.

program coming to Raleigh and Harnett and Pasquotank counties

That is why Simmons and other officials believe the pilot program is important, which has been rolled out in Central Prison in Raleigh and at prisons in Harnett and Pasquotank counties.

It works by streamlining the hiring process for correctional officers, which has many steps and can take up to 45 days until the state says yes to an applicant. But, as Stein, a Democrat, said at the press conference, many people can’t wait that long for a paycheck.

Once a person passes through the initial steps of being hired, they are put to work immediately in other roles as the certification steps continue.

“That means that people get hired, onboarded and paid quickly, so we’re not losing out talent to other places that can get them started faster,” the governor said. “The pilot initiatives are working. In four months, this pilot program has hired 95 people at three prisons: 31 new hires at Central Prison, 43 new hires and Harnett exceeding their hiring goals of those two institutions, and while we have not yet hit our hiring goal at Pasquotank, we have hired 21 new officers there so far.”

Leslie Cooley Dismukes, secretary of NC DAC, said the system consists of 55 correctional facilities across the state, and they are hiring people at a higher rate, reducing the time to hire by about 10 days and the number of people dropping out.

“Perhaps the most telling thing that I can share with you is about our staffing situation and our numbers from last year,” she said. “In 2025, we hired 2,647 people, and 1530 of those were correctional officers. Despite hiring more correctional officers in 2025 than we did in 2024, we ended the year with fewer filled correctional officer positions with the 24% turnover rate among correctional officers. Retention continues to be our greatest challenge.”

lawmakers propose 15.4% salary increase for officers

Currently, correctional officer salaries range from $18 to $25 an hour. Cooley Dismukes commended the General Assembly’s proposed salary increase for correctional officers, but added that she thought all corrections system employees, not just correctional officers, should get the 15% pay increase Stein had in his budget proposal earlier this year.

“If right now we give 15% to those on the step which desperately need it, then we may have correctional officer III’s who are making more than sergeants and if that happens, it will affect our sergeants, captains, and lieutenants, and then our case managers, food service workers, and maintenance workers,” she told reporters. “We have to recognize all of those people and the governor’s budget does that.”

Stein added that, without raises, he believes there may be more prison closures on the table, like Craggy Correctional Center in Woodfin, north of Asheville, which is scheduled to close by late summer. Stein said about 250 inmates will be transferred to neighboring facilities and every correctional officer and employee that worked there will have the option to work at a neighboring facility. There are no other potential closures at this time.

“There’s no question that long-term if our staffing shortages continue, we will have to make some critical decisions,” Cooley Dismukes said.