We believe that meaningful change starts locally. While the Wilson Center conducts research nationally, we’re deeply committed to building North Carolina-specific evidence that informs criminal justice decision-making in our state.
Across the Center, we partner with state agencies, local governments, and community organizations to drive evidence-based solutions through research and policy translation. A few of our projects focused on North Carolina are highlighted below.
North Carolina Technical Assistance Center
The Wilson Center is a member of the North Carolina Technical Assistance Center (NC-TAC), a collaborative multi-agency partnership that provides coaching, training, and resources to organizations that support individuals at risk of incarceration and overdose. NC-TAC provides tailored, evidence-based, technical assistance with a harm reduction approach. This collaborative partnership represents our commitment to translating research into practical solutions that can be used statewide.
NC-TAC is funded by NC DHHS Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Substance Use Services. Learn more about NC-TAC on their website.
Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD)
LEAD is a community-based, pre-arrest diversion program that connects people who use drugs and are at risk of arrest for minor offenses with support services such as social and medical services, behavioral health treatment, and harm reduction resources. In coalition with the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, the Wilson Center evaluated four LEAD sites in North Carolina to determine the program’s effectiveness in reducing criminal justice involvement and increasing service utilization among program enrollees as well as investigating issues of equity in the program's application. Our evaluation found that LEAD significantly reduced participants’ arrests and increased their engagement with treatment services, while also cutting crisis-related service costs by 50%. However, the research also identified important equity concerns and implementation barriers that must be addressed for optimal program effectiveness.
Learn more in the LEAD Evaluation Summary of Findings, the Full Report, and the Policy Brief.
Evaluating New Technologies
The Wilson Center conducts evaluations of new technologies used by local governments and police agencies and their impact on public safety. The Center has conducted evaluations of ShotSpotter, a gunfire detection system, in both Durham and Fayetteville. Our evaluation assessed ShotSpotter’s impact on police response times, investigation outcomes, and cost-effectiveness for the city’s budget and police resources. Our evaluation found that ShotSpotter's impact on public safety remains unclear—while it improved some police response metrics, researchers could not determine whether it actually reduced gun violence in either city, and in Fayetteville, it could not determine whether it improved investigative or potential victim outcomes.
Collaborating with the North Carolina Leadership Forum
In 2024, the Wilson Center partnered with the North Carolina Leadership Forum (NCLF) to bring together leaders and impacted people across North Carolina’s government, business, and advocacy communities with different political perspectives, to discuss an important question: What should we do to make North Carolina communities safe? This collaboration model allowed for frank discussions across ideological lines on complex criminal justice issues, creating space for participants to find areas of common ground, and we issued this report detailing the discussions.
We continue this work through focused sessions with Community Safety Forum participants on specific issues, such as our March 2025 webinar examining driver’s license suspensions for unpaid fines and fees and failing to appear in court.
Rethinking Fines and Fees in NC
The scale of criminal debt in the United States has exploded, with local, state and federal court imposing billions of dollars in fines and fees on people. In North Carolina, over 650,000 people, or 1 in 12 adults, currently have unpaid criminal court debt. If a person lacks the ability to pay or does not pay the charges, even more financial penalties and legal consequences can result. The Wilson Center studies the problem of spiraling court debt and has developed specific policy recommendations including eliminating court fees, reducing fines, and ending driver’s license suspensions for failure to pay or appear in court.
Learn more:
- When the Dollars Don’t Add Up to Sense: Why North Carolina Must Rethink its Approach to Criminal Fines and Fees (2023)
- Driving Injustice: Consequences and Disparities in North Carolina Criminal Legal and Traffic Debt (2021)
- Driver’s License Suspensions in North Carolina (2020)
- The Explosion of Unpaid Criminal Fines and Fees in North Carolina (2020)