Director considering retirement

Wilkinson is the nation's longest-serving prisons chief. COLUMBUS (AP) -- The state prisons director, who has guided his department through the nation's longest prison riot and the resumption of executions, says he's considering retirement. Reginald Wilkinson, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, has considered leaving his state job in favor of a position as a college professor or administrator. "That's kind of the passion I have," he told The Columbus Dispatch for a story Sunday. Wilkinson, 55, was appointed by then-Gov. George Voinovich in January 1991, making him the nation's longest-serving prisons chief and one of the state's longest-tenured Cabinet members. In 1993, an 11-day standoff at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility left a corrections officer and nine inmates dead. In 1999, the state resumed executions by injection and retired its electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky." Union problems Wilkinson also oversaw the prison system's expansion to 31 institutions -- before two closed because of fewer inmates and a shrinking state budget -- and the addition of two private prisons, which created problems with union employees. The 36,000-member Ohio Civil Service Employees Association has been at odds with Wilkinson over reduced staffing levels that union head Andy Douglas argues threaten the safety of employees and prisoners. Wilkinson's career in corrections began in the 1970s as a volunteer coordinator at the Lebanon prison. He took the job, he said, "because it was available and I needed the work." Wilkinson, who has never publicly stated his view of the death penalty, has witnessed 16 of the 18 executions since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999.