Tracy Lee remembers the moment he realized he was unprepared for the job he was doing. As a probation and parole officer in Mecklenburg County, he found himself supervising people with serious mental illness — and had no training for it. "I had no idea what I was dealing with," Lee recalled. "I didn't know what I was looking at. I didn't know how to respond to their behavior."
That gap in expertise — shared by probation officers across the criminal legal system — has haunted Lee throughout his career and shaped his mission at the state level. Today, as chief deputy secretary of North Carolina's Department of Adult Correction's Division of Community Supervision, he oversees roughly 2,000 probation and parole officers statewide. And in April, his push to transform how the state supervises justice-involved people with mental illness reached a landmark: all 100 North Carolina counties now have at least one specially trained mental health probation and parole officer.
The Specialty Mental Health Supervision program, which began as a pilot in just two counties in 2013, represents a fundamental shift in how officers approach people struggling with serious psychiatric conditions. Rather than treating mental illness as a criminal justice problem, the program recognizes it as a health issue that requires specialized support. Officers in the program carry smaller caseloads — up to 40 people with serious mental illness instead of the typical 60 or more — allowing them to provide intensive case management and develop real expertise.
The numbers illustrate why this matters. Research shows that justice-involved people with mental illnesses face significantly higher risks of probation violations and re-arrest than those without mental illness. Nationally, an estimated 16 to 27 percent of people on probation have a mental health condition. North Carolina's 2018 research pegged the figure at 15 to 19 percent of the state's probation population — thousands of people navigating the criminal legal system while managing conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychotic disorders.
Currently, about 255 specialty mental health officers supervise roughly 1,800 people across the state, a fraction of the broader probation population of more than 74,000. But the expansion in capacity and training has already shown results. When the program started in Wake and Sampson counties a decade ago, pilot data revealed that officers with specialized training made more mental health referrals, and the people they supervised were more engaged in treatment than those on standard probation caseloads.
The work is granular and human. Ashlyne Carman, a mental health probation officer in Wake County, has spent three years helping people access care — scheduling appointments, transporting clients to visits, picking up medications, consulting with doctors. These tasks might seem simple, but for people with serious mental illness, they are often the difference between stability and crisis.
Lee frames the statewide expansion as a moral necessity. "We don't want to criminalize mental health," he said. "Over the years we've done that because we just didn't know any better." As North Carolina continues to invest in this approach — the department hired four licensed mental health professionals to train officers and provide ongoing support — the state is learning that specialized supervision costs far less than incarceration. Housing someone in state prison runs about $54,000 per year. Keeping someone stable in the community, with proper support, offers both human dignity and fiscal responsibility.