Richard Stalder

Richard Lee Stalder (born March 23, 1951)^[1] is the former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections, a position to which he was appointed in 1992 by then Governor Edwin W. Edwards. The position is now held by James M. LeBlanc, Stalder's former colleague.

Stalder began working as a prison officer in 1971 to earn money while he was attending Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He worked his way to the positions of federal programs administrator, corrections budget officer, and the superintendent of Louisiana Training Institute in Monroe, Louisiana, deputy warden of Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson, Louisiana, and warden of David Wade Correctional Center in Homer.^[2] in Claiborne Parish, named for the late American general David Wade. From 1998 to 2000, Stalder was the president of the American Correctional Association.^[3]

Stalder was the choice of a new group founded in 1991 and known as Louisiana Wardens and Superintendent (LAWS) to head the corrections agency. The driving force behind LAWS was Burl Cain, a long-term warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, under whom Stalder had previously worked as deputy warden at the Dixon Correctional Institute. Stalder was at first reluctant to take on the statewide position because he preferred to remain warden at David Wade Correctional Institute, the only prison in Louisiana at the time to have been accredited by the American Correctional Association. Stalder's colleagues persuaded him to meet with Edwards, then a candidate for a fourth nonconsecutive term as governor, to discuss the secretary's position. After some delay, Edwards appointed Stalder; the position had been traditionally given to political supporters of the governor.^[4]

Stalder is a registered Republican voter in East Baton Rouge Parish. In 2003, he was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.^[3] Burl Cain was inducted into the Hall of Fame the previous year in 2002.

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