Reader Alert: This story is part of NC WANTED’s spotlight on North Carolina’s criminal justice system. As long as concerns exist, we at NC WANTED will point them out and seek wisdom from leaders on the front lines of our legal system.
Low compensation for the people in North Carolina who help keep communities safer by putting criminals behind bars and fighting to keep them there would seem to be an ironic phenomenon in a state where the number one industry is prisons.
But North Carolina ranks dead last – 51 out of 51 – for judicial salaries in the nation. District attorneys, public defenders, judges, magistrates, clerks and other court employees, on average, earn more money in Wyoming than they do in North Carolina.
Court officials who choose to devote their lives to a criminal justice system that has been suffering from a funding crisis for decades are talking to NC WANTED about the problems posed by low judicial salaries in effectively handling growing case loads.
North Carolina boasts two of the most prestigious law schools in the country – University of North Carolina and Duke – yet they have little to offer their own graduates for service in the public sector. District attorneys and public defenders are struggling to attract the state’s best and brightest.
“The median law school graduate out of Carolina is making $100,000 a year and the median out of Duke is making $110,000 a year. The district attorneys are able to offer around $39,000 a year to be an assistant district attorney,” said Joe Buckner, president of the North Carolina Association of District Court Judges and chief district court judge for Orange and Chatham counties. “Are we going to get the absolute best people we could?”
Buckner praised the work of assistant public defenders and assistant district attorneys for their “effective, impassioned advocacy,” but he pointed out that many do not stay in the public sector very long.
Jim Woodall, district attorney for Orange and Chatham counties, echoed those concerns. He cited difficulties in his own office to keep experienced attorneys on staff. High levels of turnover, he added, contribute to the court system’s backlog because of the additional time it takes each new assistant district attorney to become familiar with pending cases.
Wake County Public Defender Bryan Collins acknowledged similar problems on the other side of the bench.
But clerk of courts offices may have the most difficult recruitment struggle. Because of growth and an overall backlog of the criminal justice system, clerk positions are not only overwhelming and underpaid, but salaries do not take into account cost of living. Therefore urban areas, where clerks are most needed, have a harder pitch to make to potential deputy clerk candidates.
As Buckner explained, entry-level deputy clerks in Terrell County get paid the same as an entry-level deputy clerk in Wake County. The cost of living and the case volume in Wake County, however, is exponentially higher.
“That becomes a challenge for the clerk of court to find really core competent people and keep core competent people,” Buckner said. “Deputy clerk salaries are an issue of concern in our urban districts in finding people who are competent to manage the work and want the job, and (who) will stay and give us some long-term tenure.”
Buckner, Woodall and Collins all pointed out that the legislature has been more responsive in recent years and that the voices of frustrated court officials are finally getting heard.
“I do know that the North Carolina Judicial Council has proposed that judicial salaries be raised and that that proposal is going to be heard in legislature in the short session,” Collins said. “Hopefully, that will happen and that will help.”
