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RALEIGH Only one of the violent N.C. criminals set for release next week will have official supervision outside prison, and the state is rushing to establish community connections to transition them back to society.
Nine of the convicts will be immediately free of the state's watch when they are released Oct. 29 after court rulings on a 1970s law that limited the length of life sentences from that era. Ten others are sex offenders who will have to register with the state and abide by laws limiting their activity but will not have regular contact with correction officials.
One of the convicts, Faye Brown, faces two decades of federal parole.
Department of Correction spokesman Keith Acree said Monday all the prisoners plan to stay with family, friends or in transitional housing. He said the state is going through a crash course to get the convicts ready for public life, reaching out to community groups who could help them find jobs or provide support.
Each will be given the name and phone number for a probation and parole officer that can be used as a resource, but those officers won't have any legal role in their lives.
The group set to be released is made up primarily of murderers and rapists, some of whom targeted young girls. Seven were once on death row. North Carolina frequently tracks sex offenders with monitoring bracelets, but those laws came long after the decades-old sentences. State law simply requires offenders to keep their addresses up to date.
The state is notifying local law enforcement about the releases, but that's as far as officials can go to keep tabs on the inmates.
"Legally, there's nothing we can do to supervise them," Acree said.
It's another legal quandary that state attorneys have encountered.
One of the inmates, Bobby Bowden, pointed to a law in place during the 1970s that appears to describe a life sentence as only 80 years long. He said a variety of credits that prisoners can apply to their sentences mean his time behind bars is now complete. A state Court of Appeals and the N.C. Supreme Court agreed.
Gov. Bev Perdue's office hopes there may be a legal avenue to prevent the release, but attorneys for the state don't know what that would be.
State officials believe dozens more inmates convicted three decades ago could soon be eligible for release.
