Scotland Correctional Institution, one of the largest prisons in North Carolina, was a recipient of some individuals transferred from western NC facilities. (Photo: Google Earth_
More than 1,000 incarcerated people have been relocated back to western North Carolina prisons after being transferred due to Hurricane Helene, according to the Department of Adult Correction. The storm had forced the transfer of nearly 2,200 prisoners from five facilities in the western part of the state.
As of today, Craggy Correctional Center in Asheville is housing 406 men in medium custody, a shift from its pre-storm population, which consisted of minimum-custody population.
The Western Correctional Center for Women in Swannanoa is now home to 333 women in minimum custody, and about 100 men in medium custody are housed at a recently reopened unit at Alexander Correctional Institution in Taylorsville.
Additionally, 166 men in minimum custody have been relocated to the Burke Minimum Facility in Morganton.
The Black Mountain Substance Abuse Treatment Center for Women in Swannanoa has also resumed treatment for women on probation.
Two facilities in Spruce Pine — Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution and Mountain View Correctional Institution — remain vacant due to ongoing water and sewer issues. These facilities are expected to open in early 2025 when services are restored.
The relocations follow DAC’s rejection of a demand by a coalition of eight North Carolina human and civil rights groups to release nearly 2,000 incarcerated people to ease what they called “dangerous, inhumane overcrowding,” in state prisons following the transfers of prisoners to facilities in the central and eastern parts of the state.
In their October letter to the department, advocates say the influx of prisoners from western North Carolina exacerbated an already dire situation marked by severe staff shortages. In April, NC Newsline reported that about 39% of correctional officer jobs in North Carolina prisons were vacant.
“For the incarcerated, a shortage of correctional officers means long lockdowns, limited access to health care, counseling, or programming, and reduced opportunities for recreation and showering,” the advocates wrote in their letter to prison officials. “These conditions only increase tensions between the prison population and the staff and result in more incidents of violence. Since the emergency prison transfers due to Hurricane Helene, these conditions have become all the more dire.”
“The state is incapable of properly providing humane conditions and constitutional care for the people who are inside of prisons, and as a result, it has a constitutional duty to rectify that situation,” said Dawn Blagrove, executive director of Emancipate NC, in a press conference last month at the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women.
The proposal echoes measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, when prison officials sent nearly 4,500 people home.
Jodi Harrison, general counsel for the N.C. Department of Adult Correction, responded on Nov. 19 to the coalition of advocates who called for the release.
In her letter, Harrison refuted many of the conditions described by advocates and dismissed the idea of using early-release strategies similar to those employed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The circumstances that existed to justify releases during a pandemic simply do not exist to justify releases after a regional natural disaster,” she wrote.