Fitzsimon File: The Human Infrastructure Crisis

Fitzsimon File

The human infrastructure crisis
by Chris Fitzsimon
The headlines are difficult to read these days, as more details emerge about the murders of UNC student body president Eve Carson and Duke graduate student Abhijit Mahato.
The latest revelation is that the probation officer assigned to Laurence Alvin Lovette, one of the two people charged in the murders, never met with him even though he had been on probation since January 16 for larceny and breaking and entering.
The News & Observer reports that the probation officer also entered backdated accounts of meetings that didn't happen. A Department of Corrections official says efforts to revoke the probation of the other suspect, Demario James Atwater, should have been well underway after he was convicted of a firearm charge last summer.
The new twists on the tragedies have a disturbing familiarity about them. Lovette and Atwater fell through the cracks of the state probation and parole system, and there are plenty of them. The state caseload standard is 60, but probation officers in Durham and Wake Counties frequently are assigned more than 100 offenders to supervise.
Turnover is high among probation officers, whose starting pay is $32,000 a year. Not much for a job that's stressful, dangerous, and vital to protecting the public and helping offenders stay out of trouble. The technology in much of the state's court system is woefully out of date.
A few weeks ago, the News & Observer published a series on the state's troubled mental health system, the latest paper to document the shocking failures of a system charged with caring for some of the state's most vulnerable citizens. The N&O series revealed abuse of patients and unreported deaths at the state mental hospitals.
Administrators and mental health advocates pointed to low pay and high turnover for hospital staff. Inadequate technology also played a role. Health and Human Services Secretary Dempsey Benton told lawmakers this week that cameras will be finally be installed in all restraint rooms by June of this year. No one can explain why that never made it to the top of any priority list before the recent scandals.
Benton also said that turnover among nurses was 31 percent in the last fiscal year at Dorothea Dix, 22 percent at Broughton Hospital. State nurses and health techs are low paid, despite working in a job that is stressful, dangerous, and vital to protecting people's lives.
And it's not just a problem with hospitals and probation offices. There are similar problems in other agencies that provide vital services that protect the public. High caseloads are common for staff that investigate farmworker standards, OHSA compliance, rest home operations, etc.
The problems are not secrets. They pop up every year as the General Assembly puts together the state budget and finds a few hundred thousand dollars to lower an impossible caseload to simply an unmanageable one. Reports by national groups and state advocacy organizations often draw attention to the crisis in human infrastructure in the state.
A national report on the state probation and parole system in 2004 identified many of the problems that the recent cases have tragically highlighted.
The problem is that governors and legislators aren't lining up to fight for major new investments in state agencies like Corrections or Facility Services. Not much glory in that.
Lawmakers will vote for new prison beds in a heartbeat and brag about it on the campaign trail. But spending more on managing the people who leave prison is another thing altogether, so the shocking caseload numbers on the budget sheets remain just that, numbers on a sheet of paper.
The salaries of hospital techs or probation officers get even less notice and the high turnover rate is almost never mentioned. They only surface now, when we all want to know why people in mental hospitals are dying, and why offenders on probation aren't supervised.
It's not one specific person's fault, though the people who run the agencies owe it to the public they serve to demand more funding, better paid workers, and the latest technology.
The public debate about the state budget is mostly waged between politicians who support more funding for public schools and occasionally for human services, and those who constantly complain that state government spends too much and use misleading research by the market fundamentalist think tanks to try to prove it.
That leaves little room for a crucial discussion, how to make the major investments in the human infrastructure and technology to have the state government we need to protect public safety and care for the people under the state's watch. How many more tragedies will it take before we seriously ask that question?

Jim Hightower Coming to Chapel Hill
Common Cause invites you to hear Jim Hightower talk about his new book, Swim Against The Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow. In his words, the book give "the lowdown on how to put up--not shut up--in the fight for our future." North Carolina's own reform community is highlighted in the book as one of the success stories in fighting big money politics.Don't miss this fun and inspirational event--Friday, April 18th, 7pm at the Friday Center. Tickets are $10 (or $50 if you want to attend a private reception/book signing).Click here to purchase your tickets

Low-Quality Jobs Leave NC Families Struggling
By John Quinterno
Thousands of North Carolina families don’t earn enough to meet a basic family budget, thanks in large part to the growing number of low-quality jobs. However, changes to state policies can help these families build more financially secure futures.
Making Ends Meet on Low Wages: The 2008 North Carolina Living Income Standard, uses actual cost data to assess how much money North Carolina families with children need to support a simple lifestyle. The report outlines concrete policy recommendations that would help many low-income families bridge the gaps between low wages basic needs while also improving the kind and quality of jobs in North Carolina.
This report includes detailed family budgets for every one of North Carolina’s counties, metropolitan centers, economic development regions and workforce areas.

Daily Radio
Wright’s fall

Daily NewsTriangle is pricey for families
Raleigh News & Observer
Michael Lamont of Raleigh works for a delivery company by day and cleans offices at night. That leaves about four hours for sleep. "I'm working my fingers to the bone," said Lamont, 29, as he shopped at the Super Dollar in downtown Raleigh on Tuesday. His wife works, too, but the couple stretch to make ends meet.

Script: McCrory: “Why am I running for governor?
We take too much money…Charlotte Observer McCrory: "Why am I running for governor? We take too much money from the pockets of men and women working in North Carolina. Our state income tax is too high. North Carolinians are being punished for working. That's wrong.

Debra G. Dihoff comments on a North Carolina mental health tragedy
Greensboro News-Record There are many victims in the events that led to the death of Ruth Terrell, 88, at the hands of a young man with full-blown psychosis in 2005. The National Alliance on Mental Illness North Carolina extends its deepest sympathies to the family of the victim and to the whole community.

Neal banks on ‘change’ year
Raleigh News & Observer
Even while he was pursuing high finance on Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Jim Neal always had one eye trained on a political career. After returning home to North Carolina in 2006, Neal wasted little time in plunging into a U.S. Senate race that scared away most of the state's big-name Democrats: taking on Republican U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

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