Word: rufo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Opinion polls show a two-tier race with four candidates in a virtual dead heat. They are: acting Mayor Thomas Menino; Suffolk County Sheriff Robert Rufo; state Rep. James Brett, D-Boston; and city Councilor Rosaria Salerno...
Last New Year's Day, Boston's Sheriff Robert Rufo gave 935 hardened criminals a present: a postmodern pink concrete-and-brick high-rise home -- a new designer prison, with a colonnaded inner courtyard where the inmates, clad in bright orange jackets, could stroll in pairs. Inside, brightly colored dayrooms equipped with televisions, butcher-block tables and cushy chairs completed a picture of serenity. For inmates and their watchers alike, it was a far cry from the dank, forbidding, Victorian-style Suffolk County House of Correction they had left behind on the banks of Boston Harbor. Gone were the five...
Exploiting this dire need for more jail beds, enlightened corrections officers like Rufo are pushing for "direct supervision" of prisoners, a concept that requires new functional designs. These, in turn, have inspired a creative breed of architects and builders who are capitalizing on the challenge of building facilities that provide the kinds of living spaces that officers can properly manage. "Besides requiring fewer officers to run," argues Rufo, these New Age facilities "cut down on fights, assaults, vandalism and workmen's compensation cases. Most important, they take control of the prison out of the hands of the inmates...
...Rufo fumes when he hears the new environs derided as "glamour slammers," as they are by critics who argue that it is politically unwise to make convicts so comfortable. Explains Denver-based criminal-justice consultant Ray Nelson: "Carpeting on the floors, ceramic rather than steel toilets, coordinated uniforms, wooden cell doors are all cost-effective. Besides, amenities send a message of expectation of behavior, a message that works." Included in the concept is another reversal of conventional wisdom: a stretch in jail may actually rehabilitate. So convinced is Rufo that literacy training can reduce recidivism that he shepherded...