 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
No shortage of challenges for Keller Criminal justice a lifelong affair for Secretary of Correction
As one of its initiatives, the NCACC strategic goals team charged with "enhancing the state-county relationship through effective communication and the development of a working partnership" is interviewing members of Governor Beverly Perdue's Cabinet and Council of State. In early February, Information Systems Director Judy Rhyne sat down with Alvin Keller Jr., who in January 2009 was appointed secretary for the North Carolina Department of Correction. Keller has more than 30 years of military, judicial and government experience.
How has your professional experience prepared you to lead the Department of Correction, and what specific strengths do you bring to the role of secretary? "All of my adult career, I have been involved in criminal justice. I graduated from law school in 1974 and began my Marine Corps career. I began serving initially as a prosecutor and then defense counsel and then again as a prosecutor. I eventually was the officer in charge of a small law center and, with time and promotions, had the opportunity to serve as director of legal services for two of the larger legal centers in the Department of Defense. I served as the chief circuit military judge for the Navy Marine Corps trial judiciary for eight years." In light of the current economic climate, what can counties expect to see from your department in terms of programs and initiatives? "We have 71 prison facilities across the state. We do have a presence in every county with our Division of Community Corrections and Probation Services. "The population projections are still rising, and so it is reasonable to expect that at some point we will have to address that rise in population with some construction. We are obviously trying to do some things to help drop the number of people who are being confined in our facilities, in particular those who have been confined and are now returning. We certainly like to try to keep those numbers down. "We attempt to do that by trying to ensure that when an individual leaves a facility, he or she has an opportunity for some form of employment. We have found that if an individual has a job within that first 90 days of being released it greatly increases their chances of not returning." What steps will your administration take to strengthen and improve the existing relationship between your agency and county government in North Carolina? "We want to keep an open dialogue, particularly between county governments and our local superintendents or administrators of prisons who are in their counties and our judicial district managers on the probation side. "In this last legislative session we were required to stop the community service work program. There were 127 officers who were assigned to supervise those work crews, and those were the crews who did work in the schools during the summer, and a number of other public service activities. We would certainly be willing to work with you in regards to convincing the Legislature to re-establish those work crews. From the moment those services were terminated, I was getting letters from your members, and I am quite sure the legislators were as well." How do you expect counties to interact and communicate with your administration? "E-mail, mail, visits … we had members of your staff come over and meet with us early on in this administration, and those are the types of things that we want to continue to do. You need to know what issues we have and we need to know your concerns as well. "The fact that you're giving me an opportunity to speak to your members and Board of Directors is an excellent opportunity for them to know the current status of the department and put a face to the name and vice versa. I think those face-to-face contacts are always important. It is so much easier to pick up the phone once you've had those face-to-face contacts and say, 'Can you help me here?' And believe me, we are going to need to do that from time to time regarding an issue, a prison, or a probation officer." At the end of your term, what criteria will you use to measure your success as Secretary of Correction? "The mission of the agency is public safety, so that is always going to be the bottom line in determining success. We have 20,000 employees, and they work extremely hard to try to satisfy that mission of public safety. We have 40,000 individuals who are confined and about 117,000 individuals who are on probation. So, public safety will be the measuring stick for all of us. "Obviously, reductions in prison populations and repeat offenders would come into play as well. The average cost for confining an inmate is roughly $27,000 per year and you would think that we could probably educate a number of our students with that amount of money, which is why it is important to ensure that those folks that leave our facilities don't come back." Considerable media attention was given to the probation system in Durham and Wake counties following the murder of UNC-Chapel Hill student Eve Carson. Is the issue of understaffing isolated to just those counties or is it a statewide problem? How involved are counties with their probation officers? "One of the things that came out of that was an attempt to hire more probation officers so that we could reduce the caseload on the probation officers. In addition, we changed the status of probation officers. In the past, there were two or three different categories of probation officers that dealt with varying levels of offenders. For each category, there was a different officer assigned since not all officers could handle all levels of offenders. One of the things we did this year was to collapse the numerous categories to one single category. Of course, what that meant was that the qualifications for each officer had to increase. "Retention of probation officers is a huge challenge for the department. The job is challenging, and there are safety issues, and we are not paying those officers as much as public safety officers – even though they are college educated. We are losing them to better paying jobs elsewhere. So there lies the challenge for us." |
