Cedeño to retire as director of Washington’s prisons

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                      April 21, 2008

OLYMPIA – Ruben Cedeño, who arrived in the United States alone as a 16-year-old Cuban refugee and became director of Washington’s prison system, will retire in June.

“It will be my last shift change,” Cedeño said, referring to the time in prison when offenders are placed in their cells to be counted and corrections officers on duty stand down to make way for a new shift.

Department of Corrections (DOC) Secretary Eldon Vail cited Cedeño for his experience in education and corrections, his insight and the calm leadership he brought to running the state’s 15 prisons.

“Ruben began his career as an educator and he came to corrections in 1989 convinced effective schools and colleges were critical tools in molding good citizens – and they were critical in helping offenders turn their lives around,” Vail said.

Cedeño said, “Most of the people in prison didn’t succeed in schools. We have to retrofit things that should have been fixed earlier.”

In fact, he said his most unusual experience in his corrections career was to see in offenders “The waste of talent that has been incapacitated.”

“You could probably send someone to Harvard for the price of incarcerating him or her,” he noted.

Cedeño began his education in Montana where he was sent by a Florida charitable organization. His parents had sent him alone to the United States in 1962 at age 16 just days before travel between Fidel Castro’s Cuba and this country was ended.

He graduated from Montana State University and the University of Montana and received a doctorate degree from Washington State University. Over 18 years he rose from a teaching position in the Othello schools to dean of Educational Services at Pierce College in Tacoma.

He was recruited by DOC in 1989 to link the state’s community college system to the educational needs of offenders.

In addition to finishing his career as DOC’s assistant secretary for Prisons, he also served as director of the Division of Offender Programs, acting superintendent of the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, a regional Community Corrections administrator and superintendent of the Cedar Creek Corrections Center in Littlerock.

He emphasized that the public doesn’t have an appreciation for what corrections officers and other DOC employees do.

“There is a big secret out there,” he explained. “Corrections is life and death stuff and it is a tough job. We have to be everything to everybody.”

Cedeño also said the department is under-funded for what it is expected to do. “It is true DOC has a big budget, but there are huge expectations and responsibilities. Those things cost money. The state is getting a pretty good bargain for what it has invested.”

He said he would like to see more money go to schools rather than enlarging the prison system.

“Building more cells is a measure of who we’ve become as a people,” Cedeño said.

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