Wall

PROVIDENCE –– For many of the 60 people who had come to the synagogue for a wide-ranging discussion on the state’s criminal-justice system, it was perhaps a startling and sobering statistic.

On any given day, said state Corrections Director A.T. Wall, one in every 21 men living in Rhode Island is “under the authority” of his department, either as prison inmate, parolee, on probation or home confinement. And in Providence, he said, the figure is 1 in 11.

It goes without saying, he said, that with such a vast number he cannot help but see former offenders out in the community every day. “And so do you, only you don’t know who they are.”

The forum, held Thursday at Temple Beth-El in collaboration with St. Martin’s Episcopal Church and Central Congregational Church, brought together Wall, Providence Police Chief Dean M. Esserman and Peter Wells, editor of the Providence American, the city’s African-American newspaper, to talk about what’s right and what’s wrong with the state’s criminal-justice system, and what can be done to make it better.

It was moderated by Brown University’s Glenn C. Loury, a professor of economics and social history. His op-ed piece for the New York Times last July, “Beyond Racial Profiling,” in the aftermath of the controversy over the arrest of a black Harvard professor in his Cambridge home, inspired the forum.

For his part, Loury barely touched on the issue of racial profiling as he grilled the panelists on whether they thought the justice system in Rhode Island is working and what can be done to make things better.

Both Wall and Esserman admitted to their frustration at how often the police have to “arrest and re-arrest” the same individuals and how often inmates who have spent time in prison vow never to return, only to end up back at the Adult Correctional Institutions.

“We have very loyal alumni who keep coming back, ” Wall said.

Esserman said another troubling aspect is how often the police must comfort grieving parents whose children have been slain.

It’s not right that parents should bury their children, he said. The normal thing “is for our children to bury us.”

But two hours before the forum, Esserman said, he was at Rhode Island Hospital with a woman “crying on my shoulder” because her 18-year-old daughter had just been shot and killed by her live-in boyfriend. At the hospital was the victim’s six-month-old baby, who would now have to be cared for by her grandmother.

Near the end of the conversation, Loury asked the participants if they could move beyond the “bleak eloquence” and offer any solutions that could give some reason for hope.

Wells, the newspaper editor, said he believes that even before the discipline of the prison system, there must be a change in the attitude of parents.

“I think that we first need to pull those Dr. Spock books off the shelves that say you can’t discipline your children. If you can’t teach respect and discipline to your children when they are young, how are they to learn it later? Parents must be more accountable for their offspring.”

Wells urged a return to the days when young people are trained to have a healthy fear of what their parents would say or do about bad behavior, instead of having the notion that they can call the police to say their parents are “threatening them.”’

Likewise, he said, teachers should feel they have the backing of parents, and there needs to be broad effort to bring back or reinvigorate the kinds of groups where young people develop character, leadership and social skills, as found in the Boy and Girl Scouts.

Wall said there should be more programs that help inmates make the transition back into regular society, but said he knows that in this economy, spending too much money on corrections, “it’s a hard sell.”

rdujardi@projo.com