Former R.I. corrections director John Moran dead at 80

Published Feb. 22, 2011 at 6:24 p.m.

NARRAGANSETT, R.I...-- Former corrections director John J. Moran, credited with leading the state prison out of the violent era of the 1970s and shepherding it through a decade of tumultuous, court-ordered improvements, died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 80.

Moran retired in 1990 to his home in Narragansett, a short walk from Sand Hill Cove Beach. But his accomplishments during his 12 1/2-year leadership of the Adult Correctional Institutions -- then infamous for its deplorable conditions and the subject of a landmark overcrowding case -- kept him in high esteem among many of his subordinates.

Several of them still remained close to him, visiting often. Some referred to him as "director."

"The thing that impressed me most about him was his honesty," said Joseph DiNitto, who served as Moran's assistant as well as his department spokesman. "His honesty and the fact that he was a true penologist. He knew prisons, from the infrastructure all the way out to community-based programs. He was the consummate director."

During his tenure, the chain-smoking, slightly built Moran earned the respect and admiration of even his adversaries as a straight-talking but fair administrator.

When Moran retired, Former Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy said that hiring him in 1978 was the best appointment he'd ever made.

"There was a real question of who was running the prison and who was in control of the administration and inmates," said Garrahy. "John turned that system right around."

Born in Somerville, Mass., Moran had his first exposure to crime and criminals as a teenager working at a New Hampshire summer camp. He was painting the docks when school buses arrived carrying 150 probationary youngsters from Boston for a brief stay.

"They seemed no different from other people I knew and so I got interested in working with them," Moran told the Journal in 1990.

Moran eventually received a master's degree in social work from Boston College and began working with juvenile and adult felons as a counselor and administrator in Massachusetts.

In 1965, he moved to Vermont, where he became an associate warden of the state prison and later superintendent of Vermont's Youth Center. Four years later, Delaware recruited him to run its juvenile division. He was then promoted to run that state's crowded adult prison.

In 1973, armed with a growing reputation as an innovative, no-nonsense problem solver, he became director of Arizona's Department of Corrections, considered the worst state prison system in the country at the time

Gangs of inmates made guns in the hobby shop and preyed on other prisoners. Within Moran's first six months on the job, inmates killed two guards. But four years later, prison experts were crediting him with turning the prison around.

With heavy lobbying from Governor Garrahy, Moran accepted the job of trying to overhaul Rhode Island's prison, where years of neglect and poor management had culminated in a six-month lockup of prisoners.

He arrived in Providence at the height of the Blizzard of '78 and walked from the old train station on Exchange Terrace to the State House, reporting to Garrahy, as the story has been told, looking like the Abominable Snowman.

On his first day on the job that wintry day in February, Moran announced that within a week he would have a plan to end the lockup. He walked through the cellblocks, telling prisoners that he was in charge but he would be fair.

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