By Rachel Crumpler

More than 600 people gathered in Raleigh last April at the North Carolina Rehabilitation and Reentry Conference. One perhaps unexpected attendee sat front and center: first lady Anna Stein.

The reason soon became clear. Stein addressed the crowd, announcing rehabilitation and reentry as one of three priority issues she planned to focus on during her husband Gov. Josh Stein’s time in office. 

“People who are incarcerated are truly the invisible of our society,” Stein told conference attendees on April 2. “I want to give them the message that I see them, and I want to hear what they have to say.

“I’m excited to roll up my sleeves and get to work alongside you,” she continued.

The announcement sparked a buzz in the room. Many attendees had spent years pressing for greater attention on rehabilitation and the challenges of reentering communities after incarceration. They had worked — sometimes with little progress — to elevate issues affecting a population that’s often overlooked, even though thousands of people cycle through North Carolina’s prisons and jails each year.

To advocates, Stein’s remarks signaled that the new administration intended to continue — and even expand — the emphasis on strengthening support for people leaving incarceration that began under former Gov. Roy Cooper in 2024. 

That sent a “ripple of excitement throughout the entire reentry community,” said Jennifer Jackson, chief executive officer of Arise Collective, a nonprofit organization in Raleigh that supports women affected by incarceration.

“Everyone understands this is a really unique, maybe once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have someone like her who gives credence, who lifts up the importance of people who have experienced incarceration,” Jackson said.

Over the past year, Stein has traveled across the state to visit prisons and programs that serve formerly incarcerated people, and she has learned from service providers, advocates and those directly affected by incarceration.

North Carolina’s state prisons house about 32,000 people, and thousands more are in county jails. About 95 percent of them will one day be released. Yet many return to communities without stable support — gaps that can quickly derail efforts to rebuild lives and can fuel cycles of reincarceration, at a high cost to taxpayers.

“It’s in all of our best interests to give them the best chance of success,” Stein told NC Health News.

Stein said North Carolina’s most valuable resource is its people — including those reentering the community after serving a jail or prison sentence. But stigma and other barriers, she said, often block access to housing, jobs and education — which are all essential to long-term stability. 

Why reentry?

Stein told NC Health News her decision to focus on reentry and rehabilitation — along with ending stigma around substance use and mental health disorders — was shaped by her work from 2011 to 2024 as an attorney and policy adviser at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. She specialized in policy related to legal substances such as tobacco and alcohol, as well as illicit substances. 

“A lot of folks with substance use disorder also have a history of incarceration or are currently incarcerated, so I started to learn about those populations,” Stein told NC Health News.

During that work, Stein learned that people leaving incarceration are 40 times more likely than someone in the general population to die of an opioid overdose in the first two weeks after their release — a statistic that set her on a path of promoting greater access to medications for opioid use disorder in North Carolina jails. 

She also helped develop a jail health tool kit outlining the fundamental components of providing care in the state’s jails in an effort to improve health outcomes for detainees.

Her role as first lady, Stein said, has opened an opportunity to engage more broadly with incarceration and reentry challenges — complex topics that she said didn’t intimidate her.

“I did public health policy. I’m an attorney. I do like to get in the weeds on issues,” Stein said. “And, boy, this is meaty.”

From learning curve to hands-on work

Stein was candid with reentry stakeholders that she was starting “at the bottom of a steep learning curve.” She set an early goal of visiting all 55 of North Carolina’s state prisons, setting a pace of getting to roughly two new facilities each month with her team.

Last year, Stein visited 20 prisons — returning to some facilities more than once. She’s observed programs in action, learned about prison processes and challenges, and met with prison staff as well as incarcerated people.

“You see things that are kind of the same [in] different places, but then you see things that are different,” Stein said. “It’s fun because I get to tell the facility, if it’s something positive, ‘I have not seen this thing that you’re doing that’s so great.’”

The visits are often shared on her social media accounts. In a Jan. 21 post, for example, she described attending a graduation ceremony for the Nurturing Fathers program at Craven Correctional Institution in Vanceboro, where men learn parenting skills and ways to build stronger relationships with their children.

For Stein, learning from people on the ground was never optional — an approach she attributes in part to her public health background.

“In public health, we had such strong relationships with the counties, and I’ve always felt like progress is local,” Stein said. “Oftentimes, there’s state policy, but if you don’t go to that local level and talk to the people on the ground who are actually living out the things that you’re thinking about from this high level, you’re not going to do a good job. 

“You have to understand it from that granular level,” she said. “So for me, that includes the wardens, the staff and the people that are incarcerated. I want to hear from all of those people about what they are seeing.”

Stein has also prioritized traveling around the state to visit organizations serving formerly incarcerated people, including programs providing health care, substance use treatment and housing.

In August, she visited Coastal Horizons in Wilmington. Melissa Radcliff, program director at Our Children’s Place of Coastal Horizons Center, which supports children of incarcerated and returning parents statewide, said she had her three-minute elevator pitch ready. Instead, to her surprise, Radcliff said the first lady spent more than 30 minutes talking to her about her work, the gaps she sees in reentry services and what greater emphasis on parent-child relationships could look like. 

“It’s exciting that someone at her level could sort of take this on as an issue, and put a fresh set of eyes on it,” Radcliff said. “Because it was new to her, she could ask some, I think, really good questions about why are we doing it that way? Or, why are we not doing it this way?”

That same approach was evident during Stein’s visit to Alamance County in November, when she served as a keynote speaker at Benevolence Farm’s groundbreaking ceremony for a tiny home community serving formerly incarcerated women. After her remarks, Stein toured the farm with former residents, learning about their challenges and hopes, said Benevolence Farm Executive Director Kristen Powers. 

Advocates say that willingness to listen — and to linger — has shown Stein’s genuine interest in finding solutions.

“I could see someone in this role maybe trying to dominate the conversation, or steer in directions that aren’t helpful,” Powers said. “I think what the first lady has been really tactful at doing is using her platform to center the lived experiences of people and the voices of those who are closest to the solutions — because they are closest to the problems. That makes her a great part of the [reentry] community.”’

Jackson, who has observed Stein at multiple events, including when she received a Champion of Hope award from Arise Collective in November, lauded Stein’s approach.

“She just hones in on the folks who are closest on the ground, the people who have been impacted by the issues,” Jackson said. “There is such a heart and interest that I have seen in her, in meeting them, in being a regular person with [formerly incarcerated people]. No power dynamics — just human being to human being.”

‘Not an empty initiative’

Stein is also working with state leaders to translate what she learns during her statewide visits into improvements. N.C. Department of Adult Correction Secretary Leslie Cooley Dismukes told NC Health News she’s thrilled with the first lady’s focus on rehabilitation and reentry, noting that Stein’s involvement helps people understand that prisons are about more than just holding people.

“The first lady is not a woman who does things halfway,” said Dismukes, who has known Anna Stein from working with her husband at the N.C. Department of Justice while he was attorney general. “I knew that she would want to be very involved and really be a partner in group thinking what solutions look like and how she can use her platform and her light to help with some of our issues.”

That engagement has led to biweekly meetings between the first lady and her team and prison leaders. The Department of Adult Correction helps facilitate tours and information requests related to programs and topics she wants to learn more about. Dismukes said that the feedback loop has been strong and collaborative, and that having Stein’s perspective — not entrenched in the agency — brings benefits, such as the morale boost for her staff who interact with Stein.

“I realized that this agency and the folks that work in the prisons just don’t get a lot of attention,” Stein said. “It’s really been eye-opening to me how welcome the attention on their issues is.”

In April, Dismukes also appointed Stein to the Joint Reentry Council, which coordinates efforts among North Carolina cabinet agencies to strengthen support for people returning to the community after incarceration. The group formed in early 2024, after Cooper’s Executive Order No. 303 directed a whole-of-government approach to addressing reentry challenges, and the state has outlined an ambitious set of goals to meet by 2030. Stein’s appointment gives her a seat at the table as statewide reforms are planned and implemented. 

Kerwin Pittman, who spent more than 11 years incarcerated and is a member of the council, said seeing Stein champion the issue and prioritize the perspectives of formerly incarcerated individuals is meaningful.

“It is extremely reassuring to see someone of her magnitude and stature shine a light on reentry because for a long time, stakeholders who really had power did not pay attention to reentry and recidivism reduction,” Pittman said.

Dismukes said it’s clear from working closely with Stein that “this is not an empty initiative for her.”

“She takes it very seriously and wants to see outcomes, and wants to see results, and wants to see partnerships,” Dismukes said.

Work ahead

As Stein’s understanding of incarceration and reentry has deepened, she said she’s ready to push beyond listening and learning — and toward tangible change. 

In the coming year, she plans to focus on strengthening parenting programs, as about one-third of North Carolina’s prison population are parents with minor children; supporting peer-led initiatives that allow incarcerated people to use their skills to help one another; and expanding the number of community volunteers inside prisons.

“There will be many more, but those are just some of the ones that I can see right now,” Stein told NC Health News.

Significant challenges remain in advancing the state’s rehabilitation and reentry goals — chief among them: staffing. The N.C. Department of Adult Correction is grappling with critical staff shortages that affect daily operations and access to programming. 

Stein said she wants to find ways to better support the well-being of correctional officers, who she recognizes play a vital role in supporting the incarcerated population and in public safety. 

“Our ability to provide rehabilitation and reentry programming is contingent upon having strong staffing in our prisons,” Stein said.

Building support

Advocates who work to support formerly incarcerated people know progress is rarely simple or fast — and that the first lady’s involvement alone won’t solve deeply rooted problems, particularly when funding and policy decisions are largely outside her direct control. 

Still, many say her presence and attention bring momentum.

“No matter who’s been elected in office, it’s always felt like an uphill battle when it comes to policy and legislation,” Powers from Benevolence Farm said. “What people affected by incarceration and the organizations supporting them have always known is our successes are really going to be based on the strength of our community. Elections are going to change who’s in office and who holds power. What’s in our control is building that community of support.”

Powers said the first lady is helping strengthen that foundation, and she hopes other leaders will follow.

“The more people understand this work, the better — especially in this time where it feels like we are prioritizing incarcerating people instead of figuring out how to solve the actual issues that lead to incarceration,” Powers said.

Stein said she hopes her platform can reduce stigma around incarceration by reminding the public that people are more than their worst mistakes and by bringing visibility to the challenges of rebuilding a life after incarceration. She’s worked to weave that message into her everyday role as first lady, including at Christmas, when she decorated the tree at the Executive Mansion with ornaments made by incarcerated parents and their children. 

“We will never be able to measure the impact that I would personally have on this issue,” Stein said. “But all I can do is try.”

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