On February 5, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein (D) signed an executive order titled “Protecting North Carolinians Through Stronger Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice Systems.” Sold as an improvement to the state’s behavioral health crisis response system, all it does is double down on carceral approaches while ignoring community-based programs.
In his remarks at the signing, Stein referenced the high-profile death of 23-year old Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed on a Charlotte light rail train in 2025. After 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr. was arrested and charged with murder, media reported that his mother had previously attempted to have him involuntarily committed. The state subsequently enacted Iryna’s Law, which limits pre-trial release.
Stein spoke of the need to strengthen coordination between cops and mental health crisis responders. His speech followed a well-worn playbook wherein legislators campaign to reform behavioral health or crisis care only after a rare violent tragedy.
While experts have stated for decades that it is almost impossible to predict or prevent random acts of violence via behavioral health reform, politicians must demonstrate to voters that they are doing something about crime. Policies responding to extremely rare violent incidents will always be overwhelmingly reactive, carceral and coercive in nature.
This document appears to be more about policing and control than improving care. It seeks to expand the co-responder model, which pairs cops and clinicians on mental-health crisis response calls.
SAMHSA’s crisis care guidelines recommend civilian teams composed of a peer-support worker and a clinician. The guidelines emphasize that “co-response teams that include law enforcement can be stigmatizing and reinforce the criminalization of mental illness,” and that overreliance on law enforcement for crisis response violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
North Carolina’s data show that the co-responder approach correlates with criminalization. A 2025 evaluation of Burlington’s decade-old Law Enforcement Crisis Counselor (LECC) program found that people were more likely to be incarcerated after interacting with a crisis counselor. They were also more likely than a matched comparison group to face new charges within two years of the crisis interaction.
Stein’s executive order exemplifies carceral humanist policymaking.
The executive order also calls for increasing coordination and transfers between 911 and 988 personnel. It directs the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to develop recommendations for sharing data between the two lines “when appropriate.” The document does not define what constitutes appropriateness, nor does it discuss callers’ consent to data sharing or specify what data would be shared with whom, and why.
Such data-sharing would violate the spirit and purpose of the 988 crisis line, which North Carolina’s DHHS advertises as “free, confidential, and available to everyone 24/7.” The confidentiality was meant to provide a greater sense of safety, particularly for communities of color that have been most impacted by violent, racist and ableist law enforcement responses to crisis. In directing agencies to even partially merge these systems, the executive order would undermine the diversionary purpose of 988.
Stein’s executive order exemplifies carceral humanist policymaking that directs scarce resources towards staffing youth and adult locked facilities and prison beds, instead of expanding access to community care and prevention. The order identifies the problem as a shortage of state hospital workers and corrections officers, citing 12 out of 47 state hospital units and 3,950 prison beds that are “unavailable due to staffing shortages.” In addition to adult corrections officers, the kinds of roles it wants to fund are “youth counselors, youth counselor technicians, and youth services behavioral specialists supporting youths in the juvenile justice system.”
The executive order also acknowledges an alarming trend: Involuntary commitment petitions in North Carolina doubled from 54,000 in 2011 to more than 106,000 in 2021. Civil commitment is supposed to be a legal tool of last resort, used only in cases of clear, imminent danger. But in 2025, Disability Rights North Carolina issued a disturbing report showing rampant “misuse and overuse” of a practice that has become an “easy button” within the system.
Elaborate political theater will make no one safer.
It’s clear the governor has listened to the cops, not disability advocates and impacted community members. On involuntary commitment, Stein bypassed strong recommendations and a demand for urgent change from Disability Rights California, his state’s own Protection and Advocacy agency. Instead, he kicks the can down the road to DHHS to convene a “working group” to recommend reforms to the involuntary commitment process.
Stein also ignores the vital advocacy of directly impacted people like PeerVoice NC’s Recovery Alternatives to Force and Coercion (RAFT) Coalition, who bring real solutions. RAFT has been conducting its own study of involuntary commitment, promoting alternatives to force like psychiatric advance directives (PADs) and voluntary peer-run respites.
And the executive order ignores the non-carceral, nationally recognized response programs that are popular with communities in North Carolina. The Durham-based Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART) program dispatches unarmed civilian three-person teams of clinicians, EMTs and peer support workers to crisis calls. HEART evaluation data show that the program eliminates nearly all contact between community members in crisis and law enforcement, which supports decriminalization.
If the HEART program were funded and supported throughout North Carolina, it could implement its community-based approach toward ending the involuntary commitment nightmare. HEART’s approach is to have providers conduct evaluations in the community, diverting individuals away from court orders whenever possible, versus the current practice of hauling children and adults away to be evaluated, entrapping them for days within locked settings and overcrowded EDs.
Ultimately, Stein’s executive order is elaborate political theater that will make no one safer. If it accomplishes anything, it will only reinforce the carceral stranglehold on North Carolinians in crisis.
Image via Washington State Department of Social and Health Services