AUGUSTA, Maine — A bill to allow a privately run prison in Maine, carried over from last year’s session in hopes of addressing the needs of aging inmates with more medical concerns, was killed Monday after lawmakers were told no one is interested in running such a facility.
The bill appeared last year amid a flurry of interest in bolstering the anemic economy of the Milo area. The bill won support f rom some lawmakers in the rural northern Maine area, but lacked enough support to pass and was on the verge of being voted dead by the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.
But Sen. Stanley Gerzofsky, a Brunswick Democrat who has a longstanding interest in corrections issues, persuaded lawmakers to keep the measure alive until this year’s session in hopes of addressing what has become a pattern in Maine and the rest of the country: aging inmates.
“We know we have people that are aging in our facilities,” said Gerzofsky, noting that Maine has been without parole for decades. That keeps older offenders behind bars longer than they might have been with a possibility of early release. With aging comes increased medical and other special-care needs, which the prisons weren’t designed to provide, he said.
Gerzofsky said that the state has authorized the Corrections Department to put prisoners in nursing homes, but none of those facilities showed interest in providing that service.
“So we’re just looking for another avenue to address the issue,” said Gerzofsky.
State officials reaching out to companies that run prisons under state contracts also found no interest in building and running a facility for older Maine inmates. Acknowledging that, Gerzofsky asked the Criminal Justice panel to kill the bill and with little discussion, it complied.
Maine, which the U.S. Census says has the nation’s oldest population in general, also has an aging prison population, following a national trend.
U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics show that between 1999 and 2007, the number of people 55 or older in state and federal prisons grew 76.9 percent, while the number of those ages 45 to 54 grew 67.5 percent.
The aging of the prison population brings added expenses, says Vera, an independent nonprofit center that studies reform initiatives. Older inmates have higher rates of health problems, including mental illness, increased risk of major disease and a greater need for assistance with daily living, says Vera. Hearing loss, vision problems, arthritis, hypertension and dementia are all more common among older inmates, the group says.
Gerzofsky said lawmakers now are left without a plan to address the rising number of older inmates, but he says eventually the state will have to face it.
“Government works best with a crisis and when we have a crisis, and then we will deal with it,” he said.
Good!
We dont need no stinkin private prisons!
Amen!
I never got how bringing in an out of state corporation to run a private for-profit prison would save Maine money. The state still has to foot the bill for housing, feeding, medical etc, but also would be sending the “profits” (which means no programs to help curb recidivism) out of state instead of keeping that money in the state. So again, how would this have helped Maine? Of course I guess it was the same intelligent thinking that these corporations would want to take the expensive geriatric prisoner…wow!
Investors decided that a for profit prison would not be profitable.
They want a younger, healthier prison population from which to profit.
The Corrections Corp of America bosses are going to be very unhappy with their puppet–they invested a lot of money in his campaign.
It’s interesting how many of Lepage’s campaign promises fall by the wayside because they never made sense to begin with, and when they do the administration just pretends nothing happened.
For example, how many Lepage supporters are aware that not only has Lepage not cut one single tiny bit of the Dirigo program, but he has actually proposed expanding it’s role?
Before Lepage dirigo was not taking new customers, now they are, myself included and what a deal I got. The cobra deal is a joke. Dirigo is for everyone.
I can’t imagine any company willing to take on the responsibility of caring for the geriatric inmates.
We all know the government can’t be beat in efficiency !!
This is going to make some of Mr. LePage’s campaign supporters very angry. GOOD!
Maybe now they should consider building and staffing nursing homes for seniors. The need for that must be at least as great as the need for prisons. Oh, but wait. We’re going to house those folks in cardboard boxes when we get done cutting benefits to Maine Care. Aren’t we?
Headlines should have read: “Sanity Rules In Augusta.”
Privatizing prisons was just plain stupid in the first place.
You can hear the 12 minute debate and vote on LD 1095 here:
http://tinyurl.com/noprivprisons
Looks like the public employee unions struck again. Shame on Republicans for allowing this bill to die.
No, the accountants and non partisan analysts “struck again”.
When competent people looked at the numbers it made absolutely no sense.
Lepage missed this when making his usual dumb promises because the word “competent” does not describe him in any way.
The state already pays a contractor for mental health, medical, and nursing services at facilities such as Charleston. They have contracts with Correctional Medical Services throughout the state for this while the state provides their own security.
thank god…
We may have the oldest aging population in the country, but unfortunately, we also have a state government that has a long and well know history of not paying private companies for thier services rendered in this area. Know wonder no one was interested in this idea.
Private prisons = bad idea…Just ask PA where two judges were convicted of receiving bribes from private prisons to incarcerate juveniles for lengthy terms for minor offenses…
Don’t bother telling me someone is a judge…or a cop…or a priest…or a town manager…or some other profession and therefore is above suspicion…ANYone can be suckered to do skeezy things for the right price.
The problem with Corrections in Maine not about private prisons. It’s about the amount of time people spend there. Years ago, the “good time” laws were changed to make people do more jail time on their sentences. So, the jails started to hold people longer. That means they filled up, and that means more expense. A study was done by MDOC that showed that people in Maine spend six times the national average in jail pre-trial, compared to the rest of the country. Couple that with judges that set their own hours, and do little to push cases along. And, lawyers that will let clients sit in jail pretiral for months and even years, before getting those clients into court. All that adds up to more expense, regardless of the age of the inmate. The problem has been the stupid length of time that it seems to take for a case to go through the system. That’s what is filling the jails up. If these cases were taken care of in a more timely manner, the jails, over time, would see a decrease in population, and so a decrease in overall expenses.
Google Titicut Follies,its stands on its own.