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RIBCO
News
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2006-11-03
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Op-Ed Submission: Corrections Department Policy Endangers Correctional Officers, Inmates |
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By Richard Ferruccio
President, Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers
Superior Court Judge Stephen Fortunato's issuance of a temporary restraining order barring corrections director A. T. Wall from firing three correctional officers, was a clear signal of the volatility of our state's prisons.
Wall, by firing three officers without due process, again demonstrated how the prison administration had tipped toward the inmates, creating a situation that not only endangers the lives of correctional officers, but also the safety of inmates, and other corrections professionals.
Members of the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers have totally lost confidence in director Wall, and have called upon Gov. Carcieri to find a replacement with a strong background in corrections.
Will it take a deadly assault on a corrections officer for the governor to replace the director? Assaults on four officers in recent weeks, including the gauging of an officer's eyes, has had little impact on the director or the governor.
Judge Fortunato, in issuing the temporary restraining order, was particularly critical of the departmental hearing that barred the fired correctional officers from presenting their own witnesses.
But this apparantly has become the way of the department. It takes the word of convicted criminals, individuals who have been determined by our courts that they need to be isolated from normal society, over that of correctional officers, without even a chance of rebuttal.
Somehow this whole system has been twisted. When the accused criminal comes to court, receives his or her due process, the media and community demand their incaceration, their isolation from mainstream society. But once inside, it appears the media and corrections' administration, makes murders, violent criminals, rapists into victims. No longer are they the bad guys.
The result has been to develop an atmosphere within the correctional facilities that emboldens inmates, raising tensions to a level we haven't seen in well over a decade.
Inmates see how the corrections' administration tries to bully correctional officers, taking the word of inmates, without giving the correctional officers a chance for a fair retort. It has become commonplace.
The department's own lawyer readily admitted, with pride, that it is a matter of departmental policy to deprive correctional officers due process.
Patricia Coyne-Fague, lawyer for the corrections department, was quoted in the Providence Journal as saying that the department had fired employees in the past without granting them the opportunity to present witnesses at their hearings.
How is that due process? How is that fair to the correctional officers? What signal does that send throughout the prison population?
Unless this situation is addressed rapidly, the danger of a full-scale disruption at the Adult Correctional Instiution looms as an ever increasing possibility. |
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