An Ounce of Prevention

By Carole Tanzer Miller

Drew Stanley ’90 had no idea one “help wanted” ad would lead to spending most of his life in prisons.

All he knew was that he needed a job. So he answered an ad from a youth corrections center — and launched a 35-year career with the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Stanley recalls of his start as a corrections officer.

But he studied experienced officers and figured out their formula for success: Be consistent. Communicate clearly. And never forget that offenders serving time are human beings.

The approach has served him in many roles — from corrections officer to assistant head of programs and, since 2019, as warden at Nash Correctional Center, a medium-security prison in Nashville, N.C. It’s a complex operation where inmates crank out most of the printing for state agencies and more than 800 pairs of glasses a day for offenders, staff and Medicaid patients. Stanley supervises 650 inmates and a staff of 250.

“This job can be boring, but it doesn’t take but just a second to go from boring to very dangerous,” says Stanley, who focuses not on the risk but the mission. “We’re responsible for trying to develop a better person than the one we received.”

We’re responsible for trying to develop a better person than the one we received.

He’s proud of 24 inmates who recently graduated from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and now preach and counsel in four prisons. “A couple of guys might be getting ready to fight,” Stanley says, “and these guys will intervene and talk them down, so they prevent things from . . . turning into something larger.”

Stanley is all about prevention. To fight COVID-19, he stepped up cleaning, beefed up ventilation and adjusted housing assignments — moves that held off the prison’s first outbreak for almost 10 months after the virus hit other North Carolina prisons. For that effort, Stanley was named the state’s warden of the year.

“I had no idea I would end up where I’m at today,” he says. “But I’m a correctional officer at heart.”