CORRECTION

An article in the City & State section Tuesday incorrectly reported the status of two suspects charged in the murder of UNC-Chapel Hill student body president Eve Carson. Demario Atwater and Laurence Alvin Lovette were on probation, not parole, when Carson was slain.

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The head of the state Department of Correction has called for an independent evaluation of the probation system in the wake of problems exposed in the handling of the two probationers charged with murdering the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president.

Theodis Beck, the state secretary of correction, sent a letter Monday to Morris Thigpen, director of the National Institute of Corrections.

"Recent events have called into question the effectiveness of the department's efforts in providing supervision to offenders assigned to probation in two of the state's larger metropolitan areas," Beck said in the letter.

Because of the concerns, Beck wrote, the state Department of Correction wants its case management practices, policies, staffing and training levels evaluated in the state's largest urban districts.

Beck asked for a swift review, one that could be completed in time for any financial requests to be considered during the short legislative session that begins May 13.

This would not be the first time the National Institute of Corrections evaluated probation system practices in North Carolina.

The agency, within the federal Justice Department, was set up to provide training, technical assistance, information services and policy and program development assistance to federal, state, and local corrections agencies.

In 2004, the National Institute of Corrections did a review for the state legislature that found equipment was antiquated, probation officers were underpaid, caseloads in some regions were high, officers were discouraged from trying to revoke probation, and vacancies stayed open too long.

The Division of Community Corrections, under the leadership of director Robert Guy, has provided annual reports to the legislature since then, but many of the problems noted by the consultant fester.

Efforts to reach Beck and Guy for comment Monday evening were unsuccessful.

The new study was requested after complaints about the parole system's lax oversight of the suspects charged with killing Eve Carson, the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president found gunned down in Chapel Hill on March 5.

Demario Atwater, 21, and Laurence Alvin Lovette, 17, both charged with first-degree murder, were supposed to be under the probation system's watch.

A Correction Department internal investigation found that Atwater, a probation system charge who was supposed to be under a curfew and intense supervision, had gone for more than a year without so much as a phone call from a probation officer.

Lovette, who was placed on probation in January, never met with the officer assigned to his case. That officer had been on the job for seven months and not received the basic training necessary to make home visits.

Corrective actions

In addition, the Correction Department's internal review of the cases showed that the officer, battling a drunken driving charge of her own, should have been on desk duty. That information, Guy said recently, was not dealt with quickly enough by a regional supervisor.

Guy met with Durham officials last week and said Beck had been considering asking an outside consultant to come in and take stock of the situation.

Top administrators have set up shop in Durham and Wake counties, where problems were exposed because of the two cases, and have begun an extensive audit.

Already, Wake County managers have been temporarily reassigned to jobs where they have no supervisory duties.

The Durham officer assigned to the Lovette case resigned, Guy said last week.

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