North Carolina is making strides toward helping people get health care, jobs and other assistance after they leave prison, Gov. Josh Stein said Wednesday, part of a push to help prepare convicted criminals for life after prison.
“We can create real pathways to second chances,” Stein said at a meeting of the state’s Joint Reentry Council. “We can create a safer, stronger North Carolina.”
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Stein’s speech comes as debates brew over the criminal justice system following two recent high-profile killings in Charlotte and Raleigh — crimes, police say, that were committed at random by people with mental health issues who had been in and out of local jails and prisons for years.
Stein said earlier this week that friends of his knew the most recent victim, Raleigh teacher Zoe Welsh. Ryan Camacho, the Raleigh man charged in her death, had been arrested more than 20 times over the past 20 years, WRAL News reported.
“Last week's horrific murder of Zoe Welsh, a local teacher, underscores the importance of this work,” Stein said Wednesday. “My heart goes out to her family and her students for the traumatic loss that they have suffered. The courts, of course, need to do their job to get as much justice as possible for Miss Welsh and her family as is possible. But what's clear is that we as a state need to invest more in our mental and behavioral health systems.”
A lawyer for Camacho has declined to comment on the case.
Stein delivered his speech on the site of the state’s first mental hospital, Dorothea Dix in Raleigh.. The campus no longer serves patients and now hosts a Raleigh city park and some state government buildings.
Increasing access to mental health care, the Democratic governor said, needs to be a top priority for state government.
“This includes more behavioral health urgent care centers and better outpatient treatment — and involuntary commitment options, when other interventions are unsuccessful,” Stein said. “We have got to do more to keep people safe.”
>> Stein, GOP lawmakers react to teacher killing: 'We are not doing a good enough job'
Republican state lawmakers, who control the legislature and therefore state spending, might debate new ways to fund mental health care when they return to Raleigh for this year’s short legislative session.
State spending priorities
North Carolina doesn’t have a new state budget in place, a critique Stein has repeatedly made in recent months to pressure Republican leaders of the state House and Senate, who have been at odds over a comprehensive state budget.
The legislature is expected to return to action this spring, likely in April. Restarting dormant budget negotiations will be a top priority.
Republican Reps. John Torbett and Erin Paré — two top state budget writers — told WRAL News on Tuesday that increased funding for mental health and public safety should be included in any new budget.
But while Republicans in the state House typically favor increasing state spending as revenues also increase, Senate Republicans typically prefer to limit state spending to pay for more aggressive tax cuts instead — the political fight at the heart of the budget impasse.
“It’s my dream that something positive comes out, to address the critical mental health issue we have,” Torbett said of the upcoming budget talks. “Folks are losing their lives on the mental health issue. We've got to fix that.”
On Wednesday, Paré sent a letter to some fellow Republicans at the state legislature, who chair a newly formed committee tasked with looking into involuntary commitment reforms, suggesting they use Camacho's history as a starting point. She first referenced the idea in an interview with WRAL the day before.
"We can strengthen the laws that are already on the books, strengthen what we passed with Iryna's Law, and see if we can't do something about these decisions that are being made at the judicial level," Paré said.
Prison reentry updates
The vast majority of people who are put behind bars will be released at some point — including an estimated 18,000 North Carolinians this year alone, Stein said.
Improving the state’s prison reentry efforts is a priority of the state’s first lady, Anna Stein. First ladies typically pick one or two main issues to use their high-profile status and connections to bring attention to, and Anna Stein now serves on the reentry council that her husband addressed Wednesday.
Many separate parts of state government have been tasked by Josh Stein — and by former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in a wide-ranging 2024 executive order — with doing more to make sure that, when people get out of prison or jail, it’s not as hard for them to get a job as it historically has been.
Getting people stable employment, the theory goes, will have a knock-on effect in helping them not become homeless or feel financial pressure to return to criminal activities.
When Stein became governor, he appointed Leslie Dismukes, a top deputy from his time in the attorney general’s office, to take over the state prison system. She also leads the reentry council. And the two are working hand-in-hand, Dismukes said Wednesday, to help people return to society after prison.
In 2025, she said, more than 500 prisoners statewide earned the adult equivalent of a high school diploma — erasing one major barrier that could’ve prevented them from finding legitimate work when released.
Additionally, she said, the state’s prisons are finding new ways to help prisoners work and make money while still behind bars. The thought is that when they get out, if they have some money in the bank, they might be able to afford a place to live and also not need to return to a life of crime. She highlighted a new partnership with a mattress company called Spec-Tex.
“We expanded to partner with Spec-Tex, to pay incarcerated individuals for mattress manufacturing,” Dismukes said Wednesday. “And that'll be $16 an hour, which is pretty close to a good living wage.”
And then there are the mental health issues. Also last year, Dismukes said, the state’s prisons helped 4,500 prisoners sign up for Medicaid. Having health insurance when they get out will allow them to treat physical ailments as well as find mental health or substance abuse treatment.
Dismukes said she thinks North Carolina has been more proactive than other states in this area, crediting Cooper’s 2024 executive order — which he called Reentry 2030 — and Stein’s continued support of those goals.
“Reentry 2030 is huge in North Carolina,” Dismukes said. “We are leading the nation. And I really believe that having the support of the governor and first lady is what is going to help get us there.”
Republican opponents of Cooper, a Democrat who’s running for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2026, have criticized him for promoting what they call soft-on-crime policies while governor