Conflict between the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers and R.I. Department of Corrections Director Wayne T. Salisbury Jr. over prison operations has once again put Gov. Daniel J. McKee’s oversight of a major state agency under a microscope.
Union President Richard Ferruccio said escalating violence, gang activity and drug activity are becoming more rampant within the facilities. This is made worse by a recruitment and retention crisis within the department, he said.
The union is facing a shortage of more than 100 correctional officers from its staff, resulting in an increase in overtime and marathon shifts of up to 32 hours that are costly in terms of both officer health and safety as well as costs to taxpayers, according to the union.
“Our prison is out of control,” Ferruccio said. “Violence is now at a level I’ve never seen.”
Most recently, Ferruccio said, a Jan. 6 directive sent to union members prohibiting correctional officers from having pepper spray at hospitals has further upset his members.
Ferruccio said he was unaware of the change being contemplated.
J.R. Ventura, chief of information and public relations for the R.I. Department of Corrections, did not respond to requests for comment. And messages left at McKee's office were not immediately returned.
State Rep. Richard Fascia, R-Cranston, said he believes Ferruccio's claims of problems at the prison and agreed that there could be a growing threat to correctional officers and inmate safety.
But he doesn't consider the matter a public safety issue at this point.
Fascia, a retired Providence police officer, said legal action or legislation would likely not address the core of the prison’s problems, adding that both the McKee administration and the correctional officers' bargaining unit need to be willing to compromise.
“They need to sit down at the negotiating table to work out a plan to keep the people working within those walls and the people who are incarcerated safe," he said.
Ferruccio said the governor promised him in November 2024 that he would try to mediate the dispute, as there are no federal agencies or outside watchdogs charged with settling the matter.
“I believe he is honest and wants to do the right thing," Ferruccio said. "Unfortunately, his actions aren't showing it. We are getting frustrated. We are losing control of the prison.”
This isn't the first time McKee's oversight of a state agency has been questioned. The governor has stood behind embattled R.I. Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti Jr., arguing the blame for the 2023 failure of the Washington Bridge should be laid on the private contractors hired to conduct inspections and maintenance, not DOT management.
At the Department of Corrections, Salisbury has served as director since January 2023, following the departure of Patricia Coyne-Fague. He was hired in 2016 as deputy warden and was named deputy director in November 2020.
But it was his 12 years at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, where he was fired as warden in 2007, rehired later that year by new management, and dismissed again in February 2009, that provided the opposition ammunition.
The Senate confirmed Salisbury to direct the department in a 32-4 vote.
Salisbury has since faced criticism for failing to disclose travel funded by third parties and using prison labor to produce novelty license plates for associates, a practice that the governor's office recently ordered to cease.
Part of the issue, according to Ferruccio, is that there was no nationwide search for a permanent replacement at RIDOC.
“He was at the right place at the right time, but he was the wrong guy for the job," he said.
Ferruccio, who has been in corrections for four decades and whose son is a correctional officer, said the progress made since the 1980s, when the system “was a mess,” is being squandered.
“This used to be one of the safest prisons in the United States,” he said. “Now the predatory inmates are filling the void. And the people paying the heaviest price are other inmates.”
Meanwhile, the prison system is becoming a larger share of the state’s budget.
Total spending for the Department of Corrections in fiscal 2024 was $288.7 million. In 2025, expenditures climbed to $312.8 million – an 8.3% increase. And in the current fiscal year, $322 million was budgeted.
Ferruccio said he believes McKee wants to find common ground but is caught in an election-year political quagmire. “If you fire him, it makes you look foolish for hiring him in the first place,” he said.
However, Ferruccio said the threats to the safety and health of inmates, as well as correctional officers, have reached a breaking point.
Citing DOC data, Ferruccio said the number of assaults within the prison hit 560 in 2025, up from 429 in 2024 and more than double since 2021. Use-of-force incidents also increased to 475 in 2025, up from 251 in 2021, he said. Suspicious activity reports ballooned to more than 13,000 last year. In 2021, it was 480, he said.
Ferruccio said it's only a matter of time before the violence spills outside the prison. An expanding cottage drug market has sprung up since more lenient punishment policies were instituted by Salisbury, changing the risk-reward dynamics of entrepreneurial prisoners.
Much of the inmate-on-inmate violence in correctional institutions stems from unpaid debts, many of these coming from drug sales, Ferruccio said.
(Updated to add comments from Rep. Richard Fascia in paragraphs 8-11, to add background in paragraph 14. Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately identified Fascia's political party. He is a Republican.)
