How community care is keeping North Carolinians out of prison—for good

Why reentry is harder than it looks—and what most people don’t see.

Bobby Harrington doesn’t flinch when he talks about the six times he went to prison. 

“Not because I was a bad person,” he said, “just lacking guidance, direction, and just trying to figure out life.”

Raised by a single mother in Raleigh, Harrington didn’t have a roadmap. What he did have was a hunger to belong.

“A lot of kids, especially Black and brown children, we don’t have that support, cultural support,” he said. “So we seek to find identity in certain cultural groups. Mine just was, you know, that street life. That—and you know—the women, the money, everything that came with it. It was alluring. But at the end of the day, it led me down a dark path.”

Every time he came home, Harrington said he wanted to do better. He told himself he would get it right. But the barriers always outnumbered the chances.

“I’d have the intention of doing right,” he said. “But I was never given opportunity, or direction, or some type of mentorship. So I’d revert back to what I knew.”

By the time he was 44, Harrington had spent a total of eight years in prison. Each reentry to life outside of prison felt like climbing a mountain barefoot—exposed, unprepared, and punished for every misstep. Housing applications were denied. Job interviews ended in rejection. Even when he worked for local government, he wasn’t allowed to be on a lease. 

The message was clear: You still don’t belong.

“It was very demeaning,” he said. “To know that I rehabilitated myself on my own, with no help from the state that incarcerated me, and I still couldn’t get housing in my name.”

But something shifted when Harrington finally connected with Darkness RISING Project, a North Carolina and New York nonprofit that offers “culturally competent” mental health support to justice-impacted people.

Now on a May afternoon, Harrington sat in the first house he’d ever been allowed to put his name on—a milestone that came nearly 11 years after his final release from prison.

Coming home to nowhere

For many people coming home from prison, Harrington said, the pressure to survive outweighs the hope of healing, and people wait for people like him to mess up. There’s the societal pressure to conform, the emotional pressure from families, the silent expectation to succeed without stumbling. 

North Carolina has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation, with approximately 559 people incarcerated per 100,000 residents, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. That’s higher than most democracies and above the national average.

More than 22,000 people are released from North Carolina prisons each year. 

According to a 2022 report from the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, nearly half of those released in 2019 were rearrested within two years. More than a third returned to prison, and one in five were convicted of a new offense. The report notes these figures may underestimate the full picture, as time spent in local jails isn’t included due to a lack of statewide jail data.

Additionally, formerly incarcerated people are 10 times more likely to experience homelessness, and often face immediate demands for employment, housing, and court fines before they’ve had a chance to heal.

“We live in a microwave generation. Everyone wants things instantly,” Harrington said. “But reentry is a process. People need time. And they need support.”

RELATED: Treatment, not prison: NC’s new $11M mental health initiative

Earlier this year, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced an $11 million investment aimed at expanding mental health and substance use services for justice-involved individuals. The new funding, part of a broader $835 million initiative, signals a shift toward prevention and community-based care.

Of that total, $99 million is dedicated to diversion programs, reentry services, and restoring behavioral health capacity. NCDHHS Secretary Dev Sangvai said state data shows more than half of people incarcerated in North Carolina report mental health needs, and 75% struggle with substance use disorders.

Finally heard

It was through DRP’s REBUILD initiative that Harrington found the kind of therapy he said he never had access to before. In the past, Harrington said his therapists were mostly white and unfamiliar with the lived experience of incarceration. 

That changed when he was paired with a Black male therapist through REBUILD who pushed him to examine patterns and gave him tools to communicate better with his children.

“I felt heard,” he said. “My therapist doesn’t just agree with me. He challenges me. That’s what I needed.”

Founded in 2018 by Broadway performer Carlita Ector, DRP began as a musical album recorded with fellow artists to help others navigate depression and trauma. The founding director herself had once considered ending her life before she sought help. 

That experience became the root of her mission to make sure no one else suffered in silence.

“I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through what I did,” she said.

From that original album grew a full nonprofit with a range of offerings—wellness workshops, a therapist directory for Black clients, youth therapy services, and REBUILD—its flagship program offering 10 free sessions of therapy to formerly incarcerated people and their families.

Harrington’s teenage son also received therapy through REBUILD. The shared language of healing helped strengthen their bond. They talked about emotions without shame, used the vocabulary of care—self regulation, self worth, listening—that Harrington himself was just learning.

“We talk to each other differently now,” Harrington said.

So far, DRP has connected more than 1,100 individuals with culturally competent therapists, and over 370 formerly incarcerated people with free therapy. But officials said that there’s still work to be done.

Today, Harrington is a community manager at Restorative Transitions, a reentry housing program in Durham. He has embedded REBUILD into the intake process for all participants. Graduates of his program receive housing and support, and those who complete therapy through REBUILD are part of a network of community care that continues long after the program ends.

Since launching in October 2021, the program has served nearly 200 people. While not all completed the full 12-month stay, many left with jobs, housing, or a reentry plan, Harrington said. Among the 39 graduates and dozens more still active in the program, he added that the results speak for themselves: zero percent have reoffended or returned to prison.

Joy as resistance, healing as policy

That need for support is something Carlita Ector knows intimately. She works on building it in the community through different projects—notably DRP’s annual block party.

It’s happening again this Saturday, May 24, with the eighth annual Darkness RISING Live Block Party in downtown Raleigh’s Moore Square. It’s free and open to all, with music, fitness, dance workshops, food trucks, and access to mental health resources. 

In past years, the event has included African drumming, yoga, and onsite therapy consultations. This year, Ector said, the vibe will be no different.

“It’s very Blackety Black,” she said with a laugh. “Our community knows they can come out and just be. It’s joyful, it’s safe, and it’s ours.”

She knows what it means to carry racial trauma in silence. She also knows what it means to rise out of it. That’s the power of what DRP has built—a place where people aren’t just seen, but held.

“Every day feels like a fight, no matter what decade we’re in,” she said. “But community care is how we survive. This block party—this work—is how we rise.”

Back in Raleigh, Harrington is still thinking about the future. For him, progress isn’t a straight line, and it certainly isn’t guaranteed. 

But he sees it every day in the men and women who enter his program uncertain and leave whole.

“I just want to see my people free,” he said. “Free from the system, free in their minds, free in their hearts. That’s the kind of freedom we don’t talk about enough.”

Both Ector and Harrington said the block party isn’t just a celebration. It’s a strategy. A soft landing. A joyful intervention. And it exists because people like Ector and Harrington believe healing isn’t just possible—it’s necessary.

“Everybody wants a better world,” Harrington said. “But are we willing to offer anything to make it one?”