The state prison population has reached "historic highs," and corrections officials need an additional $13 million this year to cope with the surging number of inmates, according to a top administrator at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

Ellen Evans Alexander, the ACI's assistant director of administration, said yesterday that over the past four months the inmate population has averaged more than 3,700, the highest in the history of the prison complex in Cranston.

The population jump has increased demands for correctional officers, food, health care and other essential services that are necessary to run a safe and secure prison system, Alexander said.

"You have a population that is not incredibly patient," she said. "Right now, we are holding our own, but we remain concerned."

On Thursday, state budget analysts announced a $104.8-million budget deficit that includes the need for an extra $12.7 million for the Department of Corrections to get through the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. The enacted prison budget, of approximately $162 million, was based on an average inmate population of 3,370. The daily average for this month has been 3,768 -- 3,536 men and 232 women, according to ACI figures.

The prison population reached its all-time daily high on July 30 -- 3,811 inmates.

IT'S HARD TO pinpoint reasons for the jump. Craig Berke, spokesman for the state court system, said there has been a large volume of defendants appearing before judges on the daily criminal court calendar, but he is not aware of judges handing out harsher sentences. Also, Berke said, he has received no reports that alternative programs to prison, such as drug and alcohol treatment facilities, cannot take on additional cases.

"I can't explain the spike," he said.

Alexander said ACI statistics show a slight increase in the length of sentences handed up in state courts from 1998 to 2006, but nothing that could account for the recent population jump. She partially attributed the increase to the arrest of ex-convicts who are on probation. If people on probation are arrested, a judge usually finds them in violation and sends them back to prison to complete all or part of the original sentence.

Alexander said that about 40 percent of ACI inmates are probation violators, and another 18 percent are awaiting court hearings for the violations. She said that when the population drops, ACI officials can close certain inmate wings and save money.

Alexander said members of a new class of correctional officers -- about 60 men and women -- are expected to graduate from a training program next month and become available. She said they will join a staff of 850 officers.

RICHARD FERRUCCIO, president of the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers, took issue with the administration's plea for an additional $13 million to carry the prison system through the year. He accused prison officials of mismanagement.

"This overspending did not come about because of an increase in the prison population, as state officials were quick to pretend," he said. "This came about, pure and simple, because of mismanagement of one of our state's most critical institutions."

Ferruccio blamed ACI Director A.T. Wall for the budget failures, saying that the administration wasted about $9 million on "expensive experimental programs," such as the Women's Transitional Housing Program and outside health care for inmates.

Alexander credited Wall with doing "a great job in a very difficult situation." She said that since the Department of Corrections was formed in 1972 as a separate state agency, the union representing the corrections officers has never been happy with anyone who ran the prison system.

Now, she said, the union's sights are set on Wall.

"They are bent on his destruction," she said. "We have had five directors [since '72] and they have tried to destroy all five directors. The directors have changed, but the tactics have remained the same."

bmalinow@projo.com / (401) 277-7019