The heart of the issue, Coyne-Fague and the union agree, is that there aren’t enough correctional officers to fill vacant posts.
Negotiations for the next contract with the Brotherhood of Correctional Officers are expected to start sometime later this year, and Coyne-Fague said doing something about quads was a priority of Governor Dan McKee’s administration.īut not wanting to tip her hand in negotiations, Coyne-Fague stopped short of saying the state would try to do away with quads entirely at the bargaining table, only that it would try to “address” them in the contract. The average officer did 6.4 quads in the 2021 fiscal year. The main barrier to doing away with 32-hour shifts is that correctional officers are allowed to do them under their collective bargaining agreement. That rarely happens, Coyne-Fague said.īut, she added: “The reality is, I can’t think of any profession, any endeavor of any kind, where you could still be very sharp on a 32-hour stretch.” Management can send someone home if they’re not fit for duty. She said she’s hard-pressed to disagree with the union when it says it can’t link any specific negative outcomes to an exhausted officer at the end of a triple or quad. The ability of correctional officers to work 32 hours in a row is without precedent in the state, and uncommon if not entirely unique for a prison system, experts say.Ĭoyne-Fague said that the officers who work at the Cranston complex are dedicated and professional, and that the prisons remain a safe place. “I’d like to explore ways with the union to make it better.” “I don’t think it’s good for the officer, his or her family, or ultimately the system that we’re trying to run,” Patricia Coyne-Fague, director of the Department of Corrections, said in an interview this week.
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