Crime and Punishment: Better than the county lockup

I stood in the Craven Correctional Facility and watched as eight men were led into a large room: Concrete floor, concrete walls -- concrete everything except the stainless steel toilet, fixed benches and sink, and the giant glass panels in the walls.

Like thousands of men before them, they were transitioning from life under a sheriff’s thumb in the county lockups to the long, hard haul under the N.C. Department of Public Safety.