Transition Services

Each year more than 22,000 inmates are released from North Carolina's state prison system. Ninety-eight percent of the inmates in prison today will be released in the future.

Through its transition services and programs, the North Carolina Division of Adult Correction strives to prepare those inmates for successful lives as law-abiding taxpayers after their incarceration.

Transition services include an array of programs, services and activities designed to help an inmate who is pending release to live independently, to work, to secure and maintain a residence, to maintain health, to assume family responsibilities, to participate in community-based spiritual activities and to engage in a law-abiding, responsible lifestyle.

In response to the state’s heightened commitment to building stronger, safer communities in which formerly incarcerated individuals will become citizens, the North Carolina General Assembly and Governor Roy Cooper established the State Reentry Council Collaborative (SRCC), a cross representation of government, law enforcement, advocacy, faith-based and judicial entities whose collective knowledge and talents formulated a Reentry Action Plan to help remove the barriers that threaten to derail the success of people returning to their communities after serving time in prison.

The Reentry Action Plan deliberately uses as its framework the goals of Transition Services to lessen recidivism and to return formerly incarcerated people to become productive members of society by:
•    removing barriers to successful community reintegration
•    ensuring post-imprisonment success through case planning
•    educating and informing formerly incarcerated individuals
•    developing competencies for independent living
•    changing behaviors
•    linking prison-based services with community-based services to provide a seamless continuity of services for the released individuals
•    enhancing employment opportunities and stability for the formerly incarcerated and
•    mitigating identified risk factors associated with criminal behavior.