North Carolina has a budget again. S257 became S.L. 2026-41 when Governor Stein signed it on July 7. The bill contains many provisions pertinent to the criminal justice community. Some, like the $1,750 bonus for every local law enforcement officer in the state (see page 537 of the PDF) have received extensive media attention. Others, not so much. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of budget provisions that haven’t received much press but that may be of interest to readers:
No more mandatory collection of traffic stop data. The budget repeals G.S. 143B-903 (see page 448 of the PDF). That statute required the Department of Public Safety to “collect, correlate, and maintain [certain] information regarding traffic law enforcement by law enforcement officers,” including the number of stops made, the race and sex of each driver stopped, whether each vehicle was searched during the stop, and more. The resulting data were of great interest to researchers, but compliance placed a burden on officers. I have heard from agencies that are happy to be freed from the obligation to track this information and from agencies that plan to continue to collect it on their own because they find it valuable as a management tool. Nothing in the law appears to preclude DPS from continuing to collect data on a voluntary basis, if it chooses to do so.
Expanded authority for license plate readers. Under G.S. 20-183.30 and related provisions, local law enforcement agencies in North Carolina are permitted to deploy automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) so long as the agencies have policies governing the devices’ use and the agencies comply with certain rules regarding the retention and disposition of data collected by the devices. At the state level, the SBI had the authority to contract with the Department of Transportation to deploy license plate readers on state rights of way, but that authority was only a pilot program, originally enacted in 2024 and set to expire this summer. Belal wrote about the pilot program in this blog post. The budget makes the pilot program permanent (see page 604 of the PDF). It also requires that the SBI submit an annual report regarding its use of ALPRs to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Justice and Public Safety.
New structure for the state’s district attorneys. The budget creates a new Council of District Attorneys “as an independent department within the Judicial Branch” (see page 414 of the PDF). The Council will be built on the foundation of the current Conference of District Attorneys and will be governed by nine district attorneys chosen by the Conference. The Council will be the administrative backbone of the prosecution function in North Carolina. Its budget will be separate from the AOC’s budget, but there will still be some connection between the two agencies, as the AOC will continue to provide office supplies and IT services to prosecutors. Most aspects of the new entity take effect July 1, 2027. I imagine that the “divorce” from the AOC will be complex, but prosecutors have long had an interest in independence, frequently observing that IDS has been an independent agency within the judicial branch since its inception.
Caitlyn’s Courage Program transferred to State Bureau of Investigation. Back in 2019, a nonprofit called Caitlyn’s Courage was founded. It was named after Caitlyn Whitehurst, a woman who was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend. Its goal was to provide for GPS monitoring of certain defendants charged with crimes related to domestic violence, with each victim to receive an electronic notification when the corresponding defendant was in a dangerous or inappropriate location. Shea wrote about the organization in this blog post. The Criminal Justice Information Network (CJIN), a quasi-governmental group, subsequently assumed responsibility for the GPS monitoring program, which grew to serve more than 60 counties. However, CJIN struggled to find sustainable funding to operate the program. According to this WRAL story, it nearly shut the program down in 2025 before securing emergency funding from the Department of Public Safety. The budget eliminates the CJIN board and transfers the GPS monitoring program to the State Bureau of Investigation (see page 470 of the PDF). According to WRAL, the transfer has taken place, the SBI is using the same vendor to effectuate the program, and no service disruptions have been reported.
There are many other provisions of the budget that would be appropriate for this post, like the changes to G.S. 14-159.4, the statute addressing damaging property to obtain nonferrous metals (see page 448 of the PDF). But in the interest of time, I’ll leave it here.