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| Wall reconfirmed as corrections head |
| By The Providence Journal |
| Published: 04/13/2007 |
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PROVIDENCE, RI Ashbel T. “A.T.” Wall, longtime director of the state prison system, was reconfirmed by the Senate yesterday as the $142,609 a year director of the Department of Corrections. Yesterday's 27-to-8 vote of endorsement followed a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week at which Wall, 53, was hailed as a “visionary” by, among others, a nun, a doctor who treats infectious diseases among prisoners, the acting superintendent of the state police and Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman, while being reviled by the president of the prison guards union, which has been locked in a contract dispute with prison management since 2003. “Yes, we've had our differences with correctional directors in the past, but never to this degree, and never have correctional staff felt so insecure about the support they receive from administrators; never have they felt so vulnerable,” said Richard Ferruccio, president of the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers. As an example, Ferruccio alleged that current prison administrators were putting prison guards at risk by sending only one officer on inmate trips to and from hospitals. But there was no debate leading up to the vote in which only eight senators split including four who work for arms of the Laborers International Union and Council 94, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees: Senators Frank Ciccone, D-Providence; Paul Moura, D-East Providence; Dominick Ruggerio, D-Providence; and John Tassoni, D-Smithfield. Pockets of state employees are affiliated with both labor organizations. Wall heads a department with a $178-million state and federally financed budget and approximately 1,550 employees who oversee 3,700 inmates, on average, and 27,000 convicts on probation or parole who, together, equate to one of every eight men in the state. A graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, Wall began his career as a probation officer in Connecticut from 1976 to 1978, prosecuted criminal cases as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan from 1980 to 1981, and then headed the Manhattan Community Service Sentencing Project, which he describes as an institute dedicated to justice reform, from 1981 until 1985 when he went to work as a policy analyst in the former DiPrete administration. He has been a top administrator in the prison system since 1987 and the director since 2000. Wall was the latest but not the last member of newly reelected Governor Carcieri's cabinet to face confirmation hearings and votes by the Senate. The Senate also confirmed the appointment of Andrew Dzykewicz as commissioner of energy resources. Carcieri announced the creation of the position last January, at the same time he unveiled an ambitious plan to supply 15 percent of the state's total electricity demand with wind power. Dzykewicz, of Warwick, had been senior project manager at the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation since 1997. |
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