As Salisbury exits, McKee turns to longtime corrections official as interim prisons director

The former warden of the maximum and high-security units of the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston will temporarily oversee Rhode Island’s entire prison system following her appointment by Gov. Dan McKee on her predecessor’s final day of work.

McKee’s office announced around 4 p.m. Friday that Lynne Corry will serve as interim director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. Corry has been with the department since 2002, most recently serving as acting assistant director of community services, where she oversaw probation and parole services.

Her appointment came on the last day of Wayne Salisbury Jr.’s tenure as the state’s top prison official. Salisbury announced in April that he would step down from his $183,322-a-year position to join the team charged with helping reform New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex.

Salisbury stepping down as Rhode Island’s prison director

Salisbury formally submitted his letter of resignation to McKee on June 9.

“It has been a privilege to lead such an extraordinary group of professionals,” he wrote. “Every day, the dedicated men and women of the Department of Corrections demonstrate unwavering commitment to protecting the public and preparing those entrusted to our care to successfully return to our communities.”

But the union that represents the state’s correctional officers saw no commitment from Salisbury, even going so far as to protest his appointment to the full director position in 2024. 

“He had the worst correction sense of anybody I’ve ever met in this profession,” Richard Ferruccio, president of the Rhode Island Brotherhood for Correctional Officers, said in an interview Monday. “The department’s in a very bad place right now.”

He mostly blames the mood at the ACI on Salisbury’s decision in 2023 to limit disciplinary confinement to a maximum of 30 days. The move came as part of arbitration in the case of Richard Lee Paiva v. Rhode Island Department of Corrections, which was originally filed on Feb. 24, 2017. Ferruccio said the policy had greatly reduced officers’ ability to hold problem inmates accountable.

“Without any accountability, they’ve been doing whatever they want to do,” he said. “They can’t really be called out.”

Brandon Robinson, a former ACI inmate who works as the campaign director for the Stop Torture R.I. Coalition, commends Salisbury for limiting confinement.

“Rhode Island’s prison does not need to operate like it’s the 1990s,” he said. “What Wayne Salisbury did for individuals inside the ACI has them better prepared to reintegrate back into the community.”

Ferruccio said he has faith Corry will be more willing to work with the union to allow correctional officers to “create safer prisons,” thanks to her extensive background with the department.

Her resume notes her early career as a probation and parole officer where she managed 300 caseloads between 2002 and 2007 across Providence and Kent counties. Corry was promoted to supervisor of the Providence Probation and Parole Unit in 2007, a position she held for the next seven years.

She was then named a deputy warden, first helping oversee the women’s prison from 2014 through 2017. Corry then served two years at the men’s intake service center and six months at the high security center, which overlapped with the start of her tenure as warden for the maximum and high security prisons.

Corry is also an adjunct professor at Roger Williams University, where she teaches courses in criminal justice. She holds a master’s degree in criminal justice from Anna Maria College and a bachelor’s degree in human development, counseling and family studies from the University of Rhode Island

Ferruccio, who works as a correctional officer for the medium security facility, called Corry “a really exceptional warden.”

“She’s someone that listens to her management teams, her captains, lieutenants, and senior officers,” Ferruccio said. “That’s all we’re asking for — someone who is at least listening.”

That support from the union has Robinson concerned that Corry may try to undo the prison’s recent reforms in order to appease correctional officers.

“She’s witnessed everything that the brotherhood did to Wayne,” he said. “I can only imagine that she doesn’t want to experience the same thing.”

Still, Robinson said “a lot remains to be seen.”

“It would be great to have somebody that’s not all about punishment, that doesn’t come in and just rip apart everything that Wayne Salisbury has built for the ACI,” he added.