URI, not ACI

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Summer 2005

Fully 70 percent of the more than 1,000 juvenile delinquents doing time in the Rhode Island Training School will end up back in the correction system, most likely the Training School or the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) in Cranston. Hardly any will go on to college.

University of Rhode Island President Robert L. Carothers wants to change that. Carothers has proposed creating a transition school for about 200 Rhode Island boys who run afoul of the law and serve their sentences. And the real carrot: Carothers would pledge full scholarships to URI for those who finish the program.

Carothers told a breakfast meeting in April that planning and starting up the school would cost about $170,000, while keeping one offender in the state training facility for a year costs taxpayers $115,000.

State Sen. Daniel J. Issa (D-Central Falls, Cumberland, Pawtucket) filed legislation to create a school called the University of Rhode Island Academy for Post Adjudicated Youth, aimed at easing the transition from the criminal justice system to society. The idea, Issa says, is to break the "jail trail" that so many juveniles have followed. A bumper sticker touted by the Rhode Island's Black Ministers Alliance summed up the hope in Rhode Island: "URI, not ACI."