This weekend’s theatrical release of the documentary about Buddy Cianci will be followed next month by another release — the prison release of the former mayor of Providence.

Although Cianci’s five-year sentence for racketeering conspiracy doesn’t end until July 28, plans are for him to be released from prison in Fort Dix, N.J., on May 30, a longtime associate said yesterday.

Cianci will be sent initially to a halfway house in Boston, the Coolidge House, but he will probably be back in Rhode Island soon after, living in home confinement in East Greenwich with his nephew, Brad Turchetta, a Warwick orthodontist and son of Cianci’s sister.

Under government rules, Cianci will have to show that he is working before he can move to home confinement, and he will have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet until his sentence expires on July 28.

Bob Lovell, a former Providence police officer and the man who drove Cianci to prison in December 2002, still communicates regularly with Cianci and helps handle the ex-mayor’s business affairs in Rhode Island, including overseeing real estate and sales of the Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce, which benefits his scholarship fund.

Lovell said yesterday that he’s heard a lot of talk about various welcome-home parties that friends and supporters intend to throw for Cianci, but that “nobody’s officially planning anything yet.”

“You have to wait and see what the feds will allow,” he said.

Cianci has a job lined up in Boston, Lovell said, but he doesn’t know where.

After Cianci’s sentence ends in July, “he’s talking about buying a house somewhere and settling down,” Lovell said.

Lovell said a family member is expected to drive Cianci from Fort Dix to the Coolidge House in Boston on May 30.

Turchetta, Cianci’s nephew, declined to comment yesterday.

Cianci, 66, will return to a different world than the one he left after his 2002 conviction for racketeering conspiracy. There is a new mayor in City Hall, one who has criticized Cianci’s corrupt regime. New high-rises are sprouting downtown. And Cianci’s longtime national radio foil, Don Imus, is history.

Will Cianci be replacing Imus on local talk radio?

“We haven’t had any talks with Buddy, but we hope to have lots of talks with him after he’s released,” said WPRO station manager Paul Giammarco yesterday. “If Buddy wants to be on the radio, we want him to be on WPRO.

“Buddy wants to be relevant, and he wants to find a place where his voice can be heard, whether it’s radio or television or the movies.”

Giammarco said that station officials have devised plans to shift WPRO’s current talk-show lineup, which includes Cianci nemesis John DePetro in the morning and Dan Yorke in the afternoon, as well as syndicated host Rush Limbaugh at midday, to make room for Cianci.

“There’s room for everybody — the whole gang,” said Giammarco, who declined to elaborate.

Officials at WHJJ, which recently fired Arlene Violet and is down to just one local talk show, could not be reached for comment.

Talk radio “would certainly be a natural spot for him,” said Artin H. Coloian, his former chief of staff, who declined to comment on Cianci’s employment plans. “I’m excited about his coming back. I think he’ll be as dynamic a champion of the city as he ever was.”

Others who have had contact with Cianci say that he has been working as a prison librarian at Fort Dix and writing his memoirs.

Barry J. Weiner, the chief U.S. probation officer for Rhode Island, said that he could not comment on Cianci’s release plans. In general, Weiner said, prisoners are eligible to move to a halfway house six months before their sentence ends. But preference goes to inmates who need more time to adjust to the outside world, including finding a job and a place to live.

Weiner said that the preferred halfway house destination for someone like Cianci would be Coolidge House, with the Barnstable County House of Correction in Massachusetts another possibility if Coolidge were full.

“Generally, with white-collar people, after two or three weeks of being cooperative in a halfway house, they are referred to home confinement,” Weiner said.

Weiner, whose office oversees more than 450 ex-convicts in Rhode Island, said that Cianci will be under supervised release for two years, and that he will be required to perform 150 hours of community service. What that service might entail has yet to be determined.

At the halfway house, Cianci will be allowed to leave during the day to work. In home confinement, his movements beyond work must be negotiated with the counselor who will supervise him. There would be no prohibitions on his being interviewed by the media, Weiner said. Other conditions governing where he could and could not go would be worked out with his counselor.

Generally, Weiner said, convicts on home confinement are allowed to leave for work, appointments with their doctors or lawyers or for other reasons, such as to shop for food or do their laundry.

Cianci would also be allowed visitors in home confinement — though he can’t associate with convicted felons, such as his former top aide and chief fundraiser, Frank E. Corrente, who was released last year after being in prison for his role in the Cianci corruption case.

And unlike prison, where hairpieces are prohibited as potential disguises, Cianci would also be able to wear the toupees — or “hair helper” as he once described them — that marked his tenure as mayor.

Meanwhile, a Cianci release party was held last night at a downtown Providence restaurant, by documentary filmmaker Cherry Arnold — to celebrate the release of the movie, not the man.

mstanton@projo.com