A Visit to the Burke CRV Center

Another stop on the recent North Carolina Judicial College Correctional Facilities Tour was the Burke CRV Center in Morganton. Today’s post shares what we learned about defendants ordered to serve 90 days of confinement in response to violation for a technical violation of probation or post-release supervision. CRV Background. Confinement in response to violation (CRV) was created by the Justice Reinvestment Act as an alternative to revocation for violations of probation other than a new criminal offense or absconding. After two CRVs, a person can be revoked for any subsequent violation of probation. (Although did you know that less than 1 percent of felony prison entries are probation revocations after two CRVs? Like, it happened 7 times in 2018. There may be no single thing I have written and talked about more that has happened less.) Anyway, as initially envisioned, CRV was significant for what it wasn’t—a revocation. It was designed to limit days of incarceration for technical violations, and to thereby reduce the prison population. Defendants ordered to complete CRV went to a regular prison, but just for a shorter time than they would have had they been completely revoked. Over time, CRV has evolved from a mere shortened confinement period into a program. And that evolution was seen most clearly in the establishment of dedicated CRV centers, which I wrote about here when the centers opened for business in 2015. Today, North Carolina has two CRV centers for men and one for women. The men’s centers are the Robeson CRV [...]