N.C. First Lady hosts reception celebrating Campbell’s Second Chance Initiative

RALEIGH - Miranda Franks-Rape saw her prison sentence as an end of the road. A victim of domestic violence, she battled years of addiction and mental health issues and lost her mother to gun violence before her sentence.

The grief, the substance abuse and the trauma took away her self worth and sense of identity.

"I had lost everything," Franks-Rape told the crowd who gathered at the North Carolina Executive Mansion in downtown Raleigh Tuesday afternoon at the invitation of First Lady Anna Stein. "Then, the Second Chance Initiative found me … I stand before you today as living proof of what happens when people decide that you're worth fighting for."

Campbell University and its partnership with the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction were honored by Stein at Tuesday's reception, attended by elected officials, Campbell administrators and faculty and constituents from several organizations with a stake in Campbell's Second Chance Initiative, launched in 2019 to extend Campbell's mission to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals seeking higher education and lower the state's recidivism rate.

The program, initially funded in large part by the Bob Barker Company Foundation, began at Sampson Correctional Institution in Clinton as a two-year program initially and later expanded to offer a four-year bachelor's degree in communication studies with a minor in addiction studies in 2021. In 2023, Campbell expanded the initiative to serve women at Anson Correctional Institution, where Franks-Rape was a member of the first graduating class.

In her emotional speech at the foot of the staircase in the main hall of the Executive Mansion, she talked about the doors her associate's degree have opened since her release.

"Today, I'm pursuing my [bachelor's] degree in psychology," she said. "I've been home for 18 months, and my life is unrecognizable. Today, I work for [Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville] as a certified peer support specialist, and I have the profound privilege of walking alongside patients, using my past to give back and help others heal.

"I walk into work every morning with a confidence and dignity that I never imagined I would possess. I don't need anyone else to validate my worth. I love myself today. I know I am worthy. I am a strong, independent woman, a child of God, and finally the person I've always been meant to be."

Rehabilitation and re-entry of North Carolina's incarcerated men and women has been a top priority for Stein since her husband, Governor Josh Stein, took office in 2025. Stein said she first became acquainted with Campbell's efforts in North Carolina's prison system through the law school's Blanchard Community Law Clinic and its prison driver's license restoration clinics.

"Not being able to get a driver's license upon release is a tremendous barrier to being able to get a job, comply with probation requirements, take care of one's children and any number of activities that a person needs to do to successfully reenter society," she said. "The driver's license restoration clinic at Campbell is an incredible lifeline to very vulnerable people."

She said she's visited Campbell students in Clinton and Anson and has admired their ability to work in challenging conditions "with resilience and tenacity." She said the Second Chance Initiative lines up well with Campbell's Hallmarks of character, initiative and calling.

"Campbell demonstrates great character in treating people who are incarcerated as worthy of its educational and legal services, just like any other person, and for serving as a model to the greater community of how to give people second chances," she said. "Campbell has also shown impressive initiative in being the first North Carolina law school to create prison-based driver's license clinics and engage in prison-based restorative justice work … [and] Campbell's prison-based work dovetails beautifully with its calling, which is its Christian tradition. Campbell puts its Christian principles into action in the community and behind prison walls, and for that I am deeply grateful."

Leslie Dismukes, secretary of the Department of Adult Correction, talked about the funding hurdles the initiative has faced since 2019. On average, an incarcerated person costs the State of North Carolina $54,000 annually (that number goes up to $64,000 for female inmates). And the national three-year recidivism rate in the state is 66 percent. Programs like the Second Chance Initiative lower that rate and save taxpayers.

Despite this, Dismukes said, SCI lost its funding in the General Assembly heading into the current budget year.

"The day that it happened, I was actually at Samson, and we were in class," she said. "And I went and talked to the guys about that, because it was a huge, huge blow to have that funding stricken for a program that has been proven to be effective and to change lives."

Dismukes said she turned to Campbell and legislators like State Sen. Jim Burgin to restore that funding as a "technical correction." They succeeded, and the program received an additional boost this year in the form of a transformative charitable grant from the Anonymous Trust - which supports the Women's Reentry Higher Education Initiative, in partnership with Arise Collective as well as scholarships and program support for students at Anson Correctional Institution.

"The [state funding] is non-recurring, so I think the thing I want everyone to take home is that we've got more work to do together to make sure that this program survives and can thrive and can continue to change the lives it needs to change," Dismukes said. "So we're going to take that message to the legislature and take that message to everyone to make sure that we can continue to fund the amazing work that Campbell is doing in the Department of Adult Correction."

Kelly Morin, assistant dean of Adult & Online Education and a leader of the Second Chance Initiative at Campbell, said the program is about giving "humanity" back to those looking to change their lives.

"I don't view this as just a workforce development type of program, because it's also for students seeking critical thinking skills and to have exposure to different professionals before they even graduate," Morin said. "It not only helps their confidence, but just helps them to be successful in the real world. Seeing where these graduates were when they started and then leaving this program; it's transformational. Coming to events like this and engaging with people who believe in this so much they want to expand it and reach more people is reaffirming."

2025 Sampson graduate Dylan Hulin also spoke about what the program has meant to him. A native of Lexington, Hulin grew up poor and endured abuse as a child. Both of her parents were drug addicts, he said, and both were in and out of prison for much of his adolescence. That meant foster homes, group homes and juvenile detention centers for much of his youth.

Eventually, Hulin said, he also battled addiction and was sentenced to seven years for drug trafficking in 2019.

"I knew deep down in my heart and in my soul that I had to change. But I didn't know how," he said. "The Second Chance Initiative taught me just that. This program not only enabled me to tap into my full potential, but it also taught me a lot about myself in general. And it helped me break that cycle of insanity that I just seemed to be so stuck in for the longest time."

Today, Hulin is a peer support specialist for Monarch Healthcare's Behavioral Health Urgent Care Center in Concord.

"Instead of selling drugs and ruining lives, I now help people get off of drugs. And I also help them take back control of their lives so that they can improve themselves," he said. "I believe the Lord allowed me to go through so much pain and to walk through so much darkness so that I would know the way out when he sent me back for the others."

Campbell President Dr. William M. Downs called Tuesday as special day for the University and confirmation of a phrase he has repeated since his first day in office (and a phrase repeated by Stein during her comments): "The world needs more Campbell."

"The mission of Campbell University is thriving behind the walls at Sampson and Anson Correctional Institutions," he said. "We are not just handing out diplomas. We are reducing recidivism. We are breaking generational cycles. We are improving public safety. And we are filling vital gaps in North Carolina's workforce.

"We can generate a lot of statistics to validate the impact of this program. But more importantly, behind every statistic is a human being - somebody who has shed the weight of a stigma and embraced the promise of a brighter future. Our students have shared that this program has given them a voice, a sense of dignity and a blueprint to give back to the very communities that they once impacted."

Franks-Rape said Campbell became more than a school that handed her a diploma - it became her family.

"In a world full of noise, they lead with genuine integrity, deep discernment and a pure heart, and I would trust them with just about anything in my life," she said. "They didn't just give me an education, they gave my parents their daughter back. They gave my children their mother back, and they gave our community a woman who knows how to say no to what harms her, to say yes to what builds others up, and someone who will never stop fighting for those who need her.

"Campbell University didn't just educate me; they helped restore my humanity."

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