The Rhode Island correctional officers union is using a billboard off Route 95 to battle proposed 'community corrections centers,' which would place nonviolent offenders at four undetermined locations around the state. 
The billboard contains images of children at a playground and the familiar cupola of the state's maximum-security prison. 
'Prisoners and children don't make good neighbors,' the caption reads. 'Stop 'community corrections' before it starts.' 
General Assembly approval will be required before the state can open the four centers, and the union is letting lawmakers, as well as motorists, know that it considers the plan a threat to public safety. 
State Corrections Director A.T. Wall responded by calling the billboard a 'red herring' that will needlessly alarm Rhode Islanders.
'The community corrections program is, in fact, better for public safety,' he said. 
Wall said 70 percent of inmates admitted to the Adult Correctional Institutions stay for six months or less. So if it wants to improve safety, the state needs to do a better job of preparing those short-timers to return to society. And that's just what community corrections centers are designed to do -- by helping offenders kick addictions, prepare for jobs and get used to being in the community again, he said. 
Wall said the centers will not be placed in residential neighborhoods. Rather, he said, the state would try to use existing buildings in 'the outer rings of inner-city areas' -- in neighborhoods filled with factories and warehouses. He said the state would try to put the centers in communities that offenders would be returning to after their release. 
But the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers has compiled newspaper articles detailing escapes and violence at community correctional facilities and halfway houses around the country. 
Ferruccio emphasized that the union does support rehabilitation programs for inmates. 'We feel, however, that these programs can be administered effectively from 'behind the walls,' ' the union said in written statement. The state has 3,441 prison beds in seven facilities at the ACI in Cranston.