Republicans are having the wrong conversation about Roy Cooper’s prison settlement | Opinion
Michael Whatley and his fellow Republicans still want the 2021 settlement that negotiated the early release of 3,500 inmates while Roy Cooper was governor to define North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race.
Lately, the focus has been on the recidivism rate among those who were released, meaning the percentage of offenders who are rearrested, reconvicted, or returned to prison after their release. A recent New York Post article highlighted that 18 of the former inmates have been charged with murder since their release, though it neglects to mention the fact that most of them would have been out of prison at the time of the murders even if the settlement hadn’t happened.
In a way, Republicans are right: recidivism is a problem. But it’s not a problem that’s unique to this settlement or unique to North Carolina, and turning this into a political gotcha moment misses an opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about criminal justice reform.
The issue is not that the settlement released people who should or would have stayed in prison. The settlement just marginally hastened the inevitable, because it only considered inmates who were already scheduled to be released that year.
The real issue runs much deeper than that, and it’s existed for much longer. In fiscal year 2021, the year the settlement was made, 44% of people released from North Carolina prisons were rearrested within two years. (The recidivist arrest rates for people released under the settlement was slightly higher, at 48%.) In 2013 and 2015, the recidivist arrest rates were 48% and 49%, respectively. Even as far back as 1993, the recidivist arrest rate hovered around 50%. Nationally, it’s a similar story: The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, yet we still have more violent crime than other high-income nations. We also have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world — approximately two-thirds of people released from state and federal prisons are rearrested within three years.
Why? The answer is actually quite simple: incarceration is not an effective deterrent of future crime. It’s a punishment, and it keeps people from committing crimes while they’re imprisoned, but it doesn’t necessarily stop them from committing more crimes when they’re released.
The solution to reducing the recidivism rate is not to be “tougher” on crime and keep more people in prison. In North Carolina, 95% of incarcerated people will eventually be released and return to their communities. Even if it were constitutional, it would be far too expensive to keep even a fraction of them there.
The solution is to create a justice system that’s rehabilitative, not just punitive. When someone commits a crime, it’s not necessarily because they’re inherently evil or too irredeemable to care about right and wrong. There are many root causes of crime, including poverty, substance abuse and mental illness. Prisons are ill-equipped to address those issues, and in some cases they even exacerbate them. It can be easy for someone to fall back into old patterns when they’re released if they’re never given the tools to break those patterns. It’s hard for someone to redeem themselves if they’re never given a real shot at a second chance.
The best way to reduce recidivism is by breaking down the barriers that formerly incarcerated people face after release. That can be achieved through rehabilitation efforts, such as educational programming, and reentry programs that help people successfully reintegrate into their communities. Research shows that prison education and workforce programs have a positive impact on recidivism rates because they create better employment opportunities for people after they’re released from prison. Formerly incarcerated people are also much more likely to experience homelessness, so programs that help them find stable housing upon release have also had success.
A great case study is Virginia, which has managed to achieve the lowest recidivism rate in the entire nation and the lowest or second-lowest recidivism rate in the nation for 12 consecutive years. That’s largely thanks to educational programming and job training, mental health and substance use treatment and reentry services that help connect people with housing, jobs and public benefits upon release. There’s no reason why North Carolina can’t do the same, but it’s not something that one branch of government can solve on its own. Under Cooper, North Carolina joined the Reentry 2030 initiative in 2024, but there’s still much more that can be done.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for habitual offenders or those who commit truly heinous crimes. Nor does it mean we should just stop sending people to prison altogether. But if we continue to suggest the solution to recidivism is putting more people behind bars, the incarceration cycle will never be broken. Having that conversation is much more productive — and less divisive — than pointing fingers.
Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten is covering politics and the 2026 elections for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer.
This story was originally published May 17, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Republicans are having the wrong conversation about Roy Cooper’s prison settlement | Opinion."
