PROGRAM AUDIT OF NCPLS COMPLETE
As many readers of ACCESS will remember, the N.C. General Assembly transferred contract responsibility for North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services (NCPLS) from the N.C. Department of Correction (DOC) to the Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS) in 2005. The General Assembly also asked IDS to evaluate NCPLS and to report its findings to the Legislature (S.L. 2005-276, §14.9(b)). IDS contracted with the University of North Carolina’s School of Government to conduct the evaluation. The evaluation report was published and submitted to the General Assembly on May 1, 2007.
The evaluation had three main objectives:
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To understand and document NCPLS’s case-management process;
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To determine the extent to which NCPLS is providing appropriate, quality responses to inmates in light of the requirements of the contract, the standards prescribed by the Rules of Professional Conduct, NCPLS’s case acceptance priorities, and peer reviewers’ views of the needs and interests of the prison population; and
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To review select cases that IDS had received written complaints from NCPLS clients with respect to the appropriateness and quality of NCPLS’s response in light of the requirements of the contract, standards prescribed by the Rules of Professional Conduct, and auditors’ views of the needs and interests of the prison population.
The evaluation had three major parts. First, each major step in NCPLS’s case management process was documented. Second, NCPLS cases from each major practice area were selected for review by 16 different attorney auditors — lawyer volunteers with at least some legal background in the particular area of law to be reviewed.
The case sample included 110 randomly selected case files (50 intake files, 30 post-conviction files, 20 jail credit files, and 10 civil files), 20 semi-random litigation files (10 post-conviction and 10 civil litigation files), and 19 files specifically identified by IDS. With the exception of the jail credit files, the file for each selected case was examined by three separate auditors.
Finally, to provide context for the evaluation, members of NCPLS’s leadership team (the executive director, administrative officer, team leaders, and the executive assistant were interviewed).
Based on a 5-point scale, NCPLS achieved an overall ranking of 4.19.
NCPLS is grateful to the Office of Indigent Defense Services and the UNC School of Government for conducting a comprehensive evaluation of program operations and services. In a planning process that extended over at least three months and an audit that extended over an 18-month period, that evaluation was comprehensive.
NCPLS is also grateful to the fine, public-spirited attorneys who served as evaluators, devoting three full business days to participate in the audit of NCPLS. That service was a realization of the highest aspirations of the legal profession, providing pro bono public service. Many of the auditors possessed specialized knowledge and were familiar with the law governing the rights of prisoners, the rules and regulations of the DOC, and the challenges posed by prisoner litigation. It would have been difficult or impossible to have assembled a more qualified, competent team from members of the North Carolina Bar. NCPLS is deeply grateful for their service.
As is always the case, many of the factors that were part of this evaluation are not controlled by NCPLS. For instance, NCPLS has no control over the growth of the prison population or the number of prisoner requests for legal assistance that are received on any given day, or over the course of time. Further, program resources are almost entirely derived from the “Bounds” contract, which has historically provided compensation for attorney and paralegal hours, but no funding for support staff such as a financial officer, a bookkeeper or investigators.
Regarding post-conviction work, NCPLS depends upon the offices of clerks of court around the state to provide the documents necessary to assess possible grounds to collaterally challenge the convictions and/or sentences of our clients. (It is not possible for NCPLS to routinely travel the 100 counties of the state to copy these materials, and clerks of court are often short-staffed and overburdened. Thus, responses to our document requests are often delayed, sometimes for months.)
As many of our readers know, the law governing the rights of prisoners provides little protection and imposes a morass of administrative and procedural complexities, as well as heightened legal standards. For example, prisoners must exhaust all available administrative remedies before they may institute federal litigation. Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516 (26 Feb. 2002). Failure to comply any prison procedural rule bars federal action. Woodford v. Ngo, 126 S.Ct. 2378, 165 L.Ed.2d 368, 74 USLW 4404 (2006). Prison officials may freely impinge upon the constitutional rights of prisoners when there is a “legitimate penological” reason for doing so. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987). And other laws impose broad constraints on a prisoner’s hope for relief through the courts. See, for example, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, Pub. L. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996) (AEDPA); 28 U.S.C. §1244(d)(1) (one-year statute of limitation for filing a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court); the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), 110 Stat. 1321-73, as amended, 42 U.S.C. §1997e(a) (1994 ed., Supp. V) (precluding suit where there has been no physical injury, requiring exhaustion of all available administrative remedies, and requiring an indigent prisoner proceeding in forma pauperis to pay the full costs of the litigation, unlike any other class of indigent litigants). All of this raises special challenges in prisoner litigation.
The peer review of NCPLS case files constitutes an objective assessment of the quality of our work. The review of hundreds of files across a number of substantive areas of law during a three-day period resulted in an overall average rating by the Audit Team that exceeded 4 points on a 5-point scale. The Audit Team thus concluded that NCPLS functions at a high level. This ranking demonstrates the commitment of our staff to fulfill the program’s mission, to provide high quality legal services to prisoners, and thereby to satisfy the state’s constitutional obligation to provide prisoners meaningful access to the courts.
NCPLS provided information, advice, and administrative advocacy in 2005 in some 13,000 requests for assistance. NCPLS has been able to obtain relief for many of our clients administratively or through means other than litigation. For example, in the seven months prior to the report, our advocates obtained jail credit totaling 20,477 days (more than 57 years of freedom) for North Carolina inmates. The $1,401,650.65 savings to North Carolina taxpayers (calculated by multiplying the total number of days credited by the average daily cost of incarceration - $68.45) is another tangible benefit of this work.
Overall, NCPLS feels that the process employed in developing and conducting the audit was fair and open. We were generously provided an opportunity to offer our suggestions to improve the process (some of which were accepted), and we were permitted to participate in the selection of the Audit Team. Because the audit presented a realistic chance to gain insight and advice for improving program operations and the services we deliver to our clients, we were happy to work with IDS and SOG, fully cooperating in the process to provide assistance and support at every juncture. The objective findings of the Audit Team, rating NCPLS operations and services at 4.19 on a 5-point scale, we believe to be reasonably accurate. Although we are proud of that ranking, we can never be satisfied with anything less that perfection in serving our clients. We will continue striving to improve those services.
We respect and appreciate the manner in which IDS conceived and fulfilled the mandate of the General Assembly throughout the course of the program review. We especially appreciate the leadership of IDS Executive Director Malcolm Ray “Tye” Hunter, Jr., and Assistant Director Danielle M. Carmen. We are grateful to Dr. Maureen Berner, Associate Professor at the School of Government, who was largely responsible for the conception, design, and execution of the audit plan. Finally, we thank Joe Gavrilovich, MPA, John Rubin, Professor, UNC School of Government and Virginia L. Hebert, Legal Associate, Office of Indigent Defense Services, for their assistance in planning and conducting the audit.
