Newly elected Governor Bev Perdue has big ideas for the North Carolina Division of Community Corrections. It seems over the past several years there was story after story of probationers committing new crimes. It peaked with the murder of UNC student Eve Carlson last year. Eve Carlson was murdered by two men, both of which were on probation and both of which were in violation.
Ask any probation officer in the state and you will hear the same thing; caseloads are unmanageably large and staff turnover is at an alarmingly high rate. With files changing hands several times in a year, officers hardly have time to learn their new clients name before they are shuffled off to someone else. This leads to extremely poor supervision of probationers in the state and violators like those who killed Carlson to run free. [read more...]