The Sentencing Matters Substack Interview: Michelle Hall, Executive Director of the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission
Hall is a leader in the national sentencing law and policy community and serves as President of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions (NASC).
Like many of us, Michelle Hall came to sentencing law and policy serendipitously. After attending the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC), she went to work for the state legislature in Raleigh. She was devoted to public service, certainly, but sentencing? In that first legislative job, she met some of staff of the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission by sheer chance. She learned about how the Commission was putting evidence- and research-based policy making into practice to effectively promote public safety and justice. She wanted to be part of it and was bitten by the bug. After attending graduate school at UNC, she joined the Commission staff, and before too long, she became its Executive Director. She has been serving in that position for nine years now. In a purple state known for fierce political battles, the North Carolina Commission has garnered bipartisan and cross-branch support. It’s experience — and design — have a lot to teach those of us working in the structured sentencing world.
Professor Steven Chanenson and I spoke with Michelle in late summer. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
-Jonathan
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Jonathan: Michelle, thank you so much for sitting down with us for this interview.
We like to start our interviews by learning a bit about the people who have made sentencing a part of their world. Could you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, why you decided to go to college at the University of North Carolina, and how you ended up working in sentencing?
Michelle: Sure!
Steven: Do I sense a bit of a rivalry here somehow? I’m not quite sure what it is, but I’m wondering . . . [full disclosure – Jonathan attended Duke.]
Michelle: I learned that there might be a little rivalry at the NASC conference a few weeks back. So, I’ll tread very carefully.
I actually grew up in the D.C. metro area in Maryland. When I was a senior in high school, I was deciding between going to the University of Maryland and UNC. I’m not sure exactly how I first focused on UNC, but when I visited Chapel Hill and toured the campus, I just fell in love.
As to the Duke/Carolina rivalry, I have to share that my freshman year was the infamous year that Carolina went 8 and 20. It was post-Dean Smith, pre-Roy Williams. That was my first Carolina basketball season. But by the time I graduated, we were national champions. It was quite the extreme journey for me. I am a die-hard Carolina fan.
Jonathan: When I was at Duke, Matt Doherty [the coach of that 8 and 20 team] was part of the 1982 Carolina national championship team that included Michael Jordan. Duke was 10 and 17 that year, so I know your pain. I was on Franklin Street [in Chapel Hill] when the Tar Heels won the national semifinal and then won the championship that year. There was a lot of Carolina Blue paint splashing around those nights.
Michelle: Oh my gosh. I love hearing this!
Jonathan: How did you end up in the world of sentencing?
Michelle: Ater I graduated from Carolina, I worked at the North Carolina state legislature in Raleigh for four years. The member I was working for was chair of several justice and public safety-related committees. Through that experience, I met some of the staff of the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission. It was the first time I had heard of any sentencing commission, either in North Carolina or anywhere. I was immediately drawn to the type of work they were doing, both on the research and policy sides, but especially some of the special studies they were doing.
I knew I needed to get an advanced degree to keep up with them. I ended up getting a graduate degree in public administration back at UNC. It was just the right fit. I studied statistics and took various research-related courses, but also organizational theory, which proved really helpful with this work.
While I was in graduate school, I worked on a task force looking at juvenile justice reform. The Sentencing Commission staff were involved with the task force as well, and when a position opened up there, I applied and joined the team. Five years later, I took over as Director. It’s a very specific and unique world that I really love.
Steven: Can we talk a little bit about that world of North Carolina sentencing? North Carolina was early to determinant sentencing but did not immediately create a sentencing commission. Can you help us understand North Carolina’s path to sentencing reform?
Michelle: It’s a great question. In the 1970s, before sentencing reform, the criminal justice system in North Carolina was facing a lot of problems, and in particular problems related to jail and prison capacity. In response, the General Assembly created several task forces and committees to study the problem and propose solutions. The first attempt at a solution was legislation called the Fair Sentencing Act that adopted determinate sentencing in 1981.
The law dramatically reduced parole discretion and enacted presumptive prison terms for felonies. Parole discretion was replaced by day-for-day good time and other types of credit. It was an attempt to gain control over the churn of offenders cycling in and out of prison with the hope of addressing the capacity issues and the prison beds that were needed.
The prison population kept growing, so the General Assembly expanded parole discretion. In response, the judges started departing upwards regularly from the presumptive sentences to see that offenders served more time. Judges, the public, and a lot of other system stakeholders felt like sentences didn’t really have any meaning and there was a loss of confidence in the system. It also led to the State being sued for overcrowding and then a prison population cap. The problems ended up being exacerbated.
By 1985, the legislature went back to the drawing board and created a new Special Committee on Prisons. The committee ended up taking a two-pronged approach to the problem. One, it recommended building more prisons. A bond was put to the North Carolina voters for that. And two, the committee recommended that a commission be created to take a comprehensive look at sentencing. Many sentencing commissions had already been created, and so the committee looked to examples in Minnesota, Washington, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Ultimately, the North Carolina Commission was given the task of developing a system that would provide appropriate sentences in a way that would stay within available resources.
Jonathan: The North Carolina Commission is really known for this innovation of using sentencing guidelines to control the prison population.
Michelle: Set out in the statute that created the Commission was a mandate to develop a simulation model to predict the resource needs associated with any policy that would impact the prison population. This is something the Commission has done from the very beginning; predicting how many prison beds are going to be needed if the legislature enacts policy X, Y, or Z, including the original proposals to create North Carolina’s sentencing structure.
Every year, we take felony conviction data and prison cohort data and simulate new admissions to prison along with releases to predict the prison population for the next 10 years. The model was used very heavily in the beginning to stay within projected system capacity.
Jonathan: It strikes me that North Carolina has been the model for successfully controlling its prison population with guidelines. You mentioned how the judges pushed back against the initial sentencing reform. What was their reaction to a guideline system?
Michelle: It’s a great question. It was a huge transition. The judges’ discretion was limited compared to the old system and the sentence lengths announced in court were shorter because of the elimination of day-for-day good time. But the sentences were real; the judges learned that the offenders would serve the sentences they imposed. Ultimately, the simplicity, the certainty, the truth in the sentences as they related to time served, and the predictability in terms of resource needs were the selling points. And the system was in such a crisis prior to structured sentencing, this represented an improvement.
Steven: I want to follow up on that. How does your prison model impact the legislature? Does the fact that the Commission does an annual capacity review influence the proposals of members of the General Assembly?
Michelle: The Commission does an annual projection and provides it to the General Assembly. This shows where the population is going with no changes. When the legislature is in session, any proposed change that might affect the prison population or prison resource needs is referred to our team. We use our simulation model to predict how the specific policy will impact prison bed needs over a five-year period. We think it’s helpful to have both the overall projection and the projections for each proposed change.
There was one point when the prison population was projected to grow beyond available capacity, and the legislature asked the Commission to propose policy changes to reduce the growth in the population. In the early 2000s, we undertook a study that reopened the grid, looking at offense severity, criminal history scoring, dispositions, and durations. The goal was to identify ways to lower the projected growth in the population. We shared the package with the legislature and they adopted most of the recommendations.
This kind of work is helpful to them and also to our partners at the Department of Adult Correction, who are managing the prison population. They rely on the projections for their own planning — what type of prisons are we going to need for men, women, minimum security, or what have you.
Jonathan: One of the things that has always flummoxed me about your commission is that it has so many members. For someone like me, who’s worked around the federal commission that has only seven voting members at the most, having 29 commissioners seems like a lot. Can you talk about working with a commission that size?
Michelle: This is such an interesting question. For me, I think it’s just what you know is what you know. When I hear that the federal commission has only seven members, I’m like, that’s so small! How do you have all the right perspectives at the table? We have 29 members. The original Commission was 23, so it has grown, bringing more perspectives to the table over time. We recently added someone from the juvenile justice world when our mandate was expanded.
I think the strength of the North Carolina Commission is in the design and the membership; the legislature was intentional to have all perspectives represented, including criminal justice stakeholders and the members of the public. For example, we have a member representing retail merchants. It might not be immediately apparent what their interest is in sentencing or criminal justice policy.
Steven: Can I drill down on this just a bit? Is having the retail merchants on the Commission a proxy for broad-based community input? I think the governor also appoints a non-lawyer citizen to bring community perspective. What is it that each of these people brings to the Commission’s work?
Michelle: The Retail Merchants Association representative is one of our longest-serving members. He represents the business community and business interests, which are affected by crime every day. Members like that lead to a broad and comprehensive examination of anything that the Commission is looking at.
Steven: You’ve also got a member from the community college system and one from UNC. Do these folks come with different perspectives?
Michelle: So, I will say that the community college system position is very new. It is required to be an individual within the community college system that has experience with justice programming, either adult or juvenile. The intent was to include someone involved with providing programs to inmates or juveniles that are confined, because a lot of that does happen through the community college system.
Steven: You also have a former inmate on the Commission. Not many commissions have that.
Michelle: I didn’t realize how unique North Carolina was in having that position. It was another one of the positions included in 1990 when the Commission was first created. Each person who has had that position has brought their unique experience to the table and their perspective on what works.
Jonathan: Sentencing commissions, of course, are known for their research focus and making the criminal justice process and policymaking more evidence-based. Can you talk a little bit about one or two research reports from your commission that you are most proud of?
Michelle: My team knows that I have a favorite publication that we produce, so I’ll highlight this one: our annual statistical report. It’s a bit different from some of the other research reports that we do related to recidivism or program effectiveness. The annual report slices and dices all the information related to felony and misdemeanor convictions imposed under structured sentencing. Especially informative is the trend information. It’s just fascinating to look at the system over time. It has been remarkably stable, save for the effects of the pandemic.
It’s an interesting examination of judicial decision-making, but is also much more. It not only reports what sentences are imposed, but also examines felonies and misdemeanors from all angles to provide to our stakeholders information that will be useful to them; for example, the ability to see how practices converge or differ across districts and how the courts collectively consider certain offenses. I consider it to be the bread and butter of the Commission’s work.
Steven: Every jurisdiction is different in how the commission interacts with stakeholders. I’m curious as to your reflection on where and how the North Carolina Commission fits into the larger system, and what you, as the Executive Director, are able to do to help maintain and further enhance those relationships.
Michelle: Our Commission has representation from a lot of our stakeholders at the table. This is extraordinarily helpful in maintaining relationships and communication. We also have joint projects with some of our partners that are set forth in statute. We especially work closely with the Department of Adult Correction on projecting the prison population and on recidivism. We also do a joint report evaluating our justice reinvestment project. So, there’s a lot of data sharing and collaboration that happens on the staff level; collecting the data, understanding the data, answering questions, developing appropriate research questions. That collaboration is happening on a staff level, but also at the commission level too.
Historically, the Commission has also been very receptive and responsive to questions and study requests from the legislature. One of the biggest assets the Commission has is the ability to share information and provide answers to questions and policy insights too. The relationships are foundational to what the Commission does.
Jonathan: From here in Washington, North Carolina looks like a very purple state, with very sharp political elbows and a highly competitive political environment. And yet, it also seems like the North Carolina Sentencing Commission has been quite stable, especially compared to experiences of commissions in other states. Do I have it right, both on the politics and the Commission’s stability? And is there a secret sauce that has helped you bring about that stability?
Michelle: I think so. On the politics of North Carolina . . . I’ll leave that to others to analyze! But politics are not a factor in the Commission’s work. And I think, to the secret sauce question, it’s by design, but also by tradition.
We’ve talked about the membership of the Commission. Being apolitical was the intentionality of the design. We have appointments from all three branches of government, so one isn’t overrepresented compared to others. Then we have all the representatives from the stakeholder groups coming from different nominating bodies and appointing bodies, and some individuals serving just by virtue of their position. I think there’s strength in the way that it was designed.
What I love about the Commission is the respect, the collegiality, the collaboration between the members. The commissioners certainly represent their agency, association, and those particular perspectives. But they will also put on their commissioner hats and think about policy from a statewide perspective and not just their particular vantage point. There is an openness to hear all the viewpoints and genuinely think about them.
There is also a tradition of how the North Carolina Commission operates. And that’s just been how each chairman has approached it and fostered a collaborative and completely nonpartisan approach. That’s intentional too, so that the work has credibility. That tradition has sustained the Commission’s reputation for integrity and what it can offer.
Steven: The role of the chair seems key. Judge Brown has been Chair at least eight years, maybe more. But the tone you’re describing has been there from the beginning, from the initial chair [Judge Tom Ross]. Speaking from experience, I know that doesn’t just happen automatically. In Pennsylvania, where I work, our legislature and our judiciary are often butting heads.
Michelle: Our Commission has only had three chairs in its history, since 1990. I’ve worked with the two most recent, Judge [W. Erwin] Spainhour and Judge Brown. Judge Ross was the original chair and led the Commission through the development of structured sentencing. The stability that comes from having long-serving chairs has been critical. The terms for our Commission members here are only two years, and everyone comes up for reappointment at the same time. Some members continue, and some rotate off and we welcome new commissioners. Each chair has been very intentional in fostering a collaborative and deliberative commission. I think that sets the tone for the way the Commission operates — focusing on the data and research and considering what the empirical evidence means for policy.
Steven: One last question is about NASC [the National Association of Sentencing Commissions]. Can you talk a little about it and your experience leading NASC?
Michelle: I love NASC. I really do love NASC, and I feel fortunate to be in that world. It’s so refreshing to be in an organization where when you say you work for a sentencing commission, you don’t get a blank stare or have to explain what you’re talking about. Everyone there knows. Most of my family doesn’t fully understand what I do for work. And that’s fine, because I have this organization where I can be amongst people who understand and who are devoted to public service and evidence-based policy making.
I sometimes question my qualifications to lead NASC — sort of an imposter syndrome. When I think about the people who have served as President and on the executive committee of NASC and how much respect I have for those individuals, I feel like I have big shoes to fill to live up to the standard they set. Leading NASC, I feel we can always do more and grow. I believe in structured sentencing and think there should be more commissions, more guidelines in more states.
Jonathan: So you know, I love the annual conference. I love the community, and I always find the conference incredibly refreshing. The people are committed; they have to be innovative, because they typically don’t have a lot of resources. Thank you for your leadership of NASC. And thank you so much for sitting down with us for this interview.
Michelle: I feel honored to be interviewed by the two of you. I hope I have done it justice, and I appreciate you being interested in all we are doing in North Carolina and across the community of state sentencing commissions.
