NCJ Number
155431
Date Published
1995
Length
12 pages
Annotation
North Carolina's Attorney General proposes a three-pronged, crime-control policy: ensure meaningful punishment; enhance tools for attacking crime; and empower citizens to make their neighborhoods safer.
Abstract
One proposal designed to ensure meaningful punishment is to abolish the prison cap set in the 1980's by the North Carolina General Assembly. The Attorney General argues that no prison has a constitutionally required capacity so long as conditions in the prison are safe and secure. He proposes that the Department of Correction have more flexibility to manage prison-population size and that more prison space be provided. Other proposals intended to ensure meaningful punishment are to authorize prison time for all violent offenders; to give judges authority to provide new, meaningful punishment outside of prison; and to streamline death penalty appeals. One recommendation for enhancing tools for attacking crime is a comprehensive drug strategy that includes drug treatment courts, the use of vehicle forfeiture to deter those who buy drugs in an open-air drug market, and drug- trafficking grand juries. Other proposals for enhancing crime- fighting tools are a court focus on violent crimes and the adoption of new juvenile procedures that will effectively address juvenile violent crime. Suggestions for empowering citizens to counter crime are to mount Safe Neighborhoods programs, increase crack house demolition, expand the use of restitution by offenders to their victims, and defend victims' rights.