When last week’s Rhode Island House Finance Committee
hearing on state spending turned to the Department of Corrections, lawmakers were not pleased to discover that running the state’s prisons has cost more
than anticipated.

Finance Chairman Steve Costantino and Rep. David Caprio fired sharp questions at A.T. Wall, the state’s longtime corrections commissioner.

How come, they asked, is the prison overtime budget so large? Why aren’t there fewer inmates? And why can’t the state save more money in the prison budgets?