Maine’s jail system — the first stop for the state’s accused drunk drivers, drug dealers, burglars and murderers — is a mess.
Just ask a sheriff or jail administrator.
“The system right now is in chaos,” said Mark Westrum, head of Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset and chairman of the four-year-old Maine Board of Corrections. “We’re not in crisis but we’re getting there.”
Bringing the issue to a head: In May, Somerset County closed its jail to inmates from other counties, directly challenging the state’s jail network and leading to inmate transportation nightmares, overcrowding at some jails and empty beds at others.
A just-released study by the National Institute of Corrections found that Maine’s system is in trouble. The statute-created Board of Corrections has spent too little time on policies, planning and procedures, and lacks basic knowledge of its own authority, the 78-page report found.
It also found that conditions in the state’s 15 jails have failed to improve since they were stitched together by the Maine Legislature in 2008.
“County jails are not better off today than they were four years ago,” read the June 28 report.
And some, such as the Androscoggin County Jail, are worse and feeling the squeeze.
No vacancy
Androscoggin County Sheriff Guy Desjardins on July 12 alerted the state Department of Corrections that his jail’s population had surged to 165 inmates, exceeding its state limit of 160. Cells designed in the late 1980s to hold a single inmate now hold up to three at a time at the Auburn jail.
Desjardins searched for beds elsewhere in the system. Newer and bigger Maine jails all had empty beds. Yet, they told Desjardins they were full.
“We don’t have a shortage of beds in the county system,” Desjardins said. “We have a shortage of funding.”
When Desjardins called, the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, the York County Jail in Alfred and Two Bridges Regional Jail, which serves Sagadahoc and Lincoln counties, had undergone state-budgeted shutdowns of portions of their facilities to save money and were at the edge of their remaining capacity. The Somerset County Jail in Madison had shut down part of its jail on the orders of its sheriff.
The state allows him to house as many as 235 inmates in the jail, but he has shut down one of four sections, known as “pods.” On Friday he had about 110 inmates. They included about 75 people from his county and another 35 or so federal inmates. None were from other Maine counties.
“I’m looking out for my taxpayers” said Somerset County Sheriff Barry Delong, who says the state has not paid money owed to the county, nor has it kept up with its costs. “The taxpayers of Somerset are getting totally screwed.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Creating a system
Jail consolidation began with former Gov. John Baldacci.
In August 2007, Baldacci proposed a full state takeover of the county jail system and the closure of four small jails, including those in Franklin and Oxford counties. State corrections officials argued that counties were spending too much money on jails and that the state could do better.
The counties pushed back.
Sheriffs, commissioners and legislators came up with an alternative plan that would stitch the county jails together into a network they called “One Maine, One System:”
• Three jails — Franklin, Oxford and Waldo — were reduced to 72-hour holding facilities.
• Others, such as the Cumberland County Jail and the new Somerset County Jail, became flagship jails, the go-to locations.
• Administered by a new Board of Corrections, the network would manage jail crowding through cooperation. Inmates would follow the available beds.
• Property tax levies for the jails in each county were capped at 2008 levels. New jail spending became the responsibility of the state.
The state promised $1 billion in savings to Maine property taxes over 20 years.
The new system kicked off on July 1, 2009.
Moving inmates
Most counties now say they have too little money. Unexpected costs keep popping up and the cooperation implied in the “One Maine, One System” slogan seems less attainable.
“I hate to be totally negative, but I’m not able to find any good points,” Franklin County Sheriff Dennis Pike said. “And that is disturbing.”
Sheriffs and administrators have learned to submit budgets to the state and to haggle through meetings of the Board of Corrections, which meets in an aging building once used by the Augusta Mental Health Institute.
Too often, meetings of the Board of Corrections are filled with issues like Pike’s. When Sheriff Delong closed his Madison jail to the system in May, it left Pike’s people searching.
With his Farmington jail remade as a 72-hour holding facility, Pike needed a place to send his inmates. At first, he began sending people to Two Bridges in Wiscasset, about two hours to the south. As that filled up, he began sending his people to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham.
And he’s not the only one.
In some cases, the closure caused inmates from the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton to be sent to empty beds at the York County Jail in Alfred, said Westrum, the Board of Corrections chairman. It’s a distance of 280 miles.
“The whole system is predicated on flagship jails,” Westrum said. “When one flagship jail lowers its flag, like Somerset did, it throws the whole system into absolute chaos.”
It has led Pike to believe that the network has failed.
“I believe the appropriate response would be to restore it to the way it worked for 150 years,” he said.
Facing a challenge
It’s too late to go back, Maine Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte said this week.
The problems identified in the report — disorganization, lack of policy and authority by the Board of Corrections, and inappropriate standards for when a jail is considered full — can all be changed.
“I think it’s a new organization, a multimillion-dollar company, so to speak, that’s struggling to get its feet on the ground and establish itself,” said Ponte, who agreed with most of the findings of the National Institute of Corrections.
He opposes a state takeover of the jails like the one Baldacci envisioned — the politics would be too difficult — but more authority by the board may be needed, he said.
The fate of the Somerset County Jail and its role in the network will be a test, he said.
“Somerset is basically saying, ‘I don’t want to be part of the Board of Corrections. I don’t even want their money. [But] I’m not going to give you any beds and I’m not going to do this and I’m going to operate this way.’” Ponte said. “If they’re able to do that, then the next big jail or county that tries to do that . . . the system would be all but crippled.”
He added, “We cannot absorb another loss of 100 beds from the system. It should get resolved somehow. And if we fail to do that, then yeah, I think we’re in jeopardy.”
Westrum was uncertain whether the Board of Corrections has the authority to overrule the closure of the Somerset County Jail.
It doesn’t, Somerset County Sheriff Barry Delong said Friday.
“If the state had that authority, they’d have already done it,” he said. “Thank God they don’t.”
Delong insisted that he doesn’t want to fight. He even believes the network can work if the state can be fair with counties over financing.
The state pays $22.50 per inmate per night for each inmate a jail must take from another county. He figures each inmate costs the county more than $200 per night.
He said he’s not looking for $200 per inmate, since having more people in his jail would lower those costs, but the $22.50 per inmate is too low.
“I’m right,” he said. “I know I’m right. The state knows I’m right. I’d be better off to shut my jail down.”
It could be remade as a community center and host potluck suppers, he joked.
Finding solutions
Westrum believes a compromise can be found.
On Tuesday, the Board of Corrections is scheduled to meet in Augusta and will likely take up the issue. They also will talk about the report.
Like Ponte, Westrum sees many of the problems as growing pains in a still-new system.
“Each sheriff is so used to running his own jail,” he said. “Big Brother stepping in didn’t come very easy for a lot of us, myself included.”
Westrum said he has trouble managing his work on the board and his role as administrator of Two Bridges Regional Jail.
“I’m not the bed guru for the state of Maine,” he said. “I sometimes question when I have the time to do my own job, because it’s always some sort of chaos.”
Desjardins, too, believes the system can work. He has seen spending increase at his jail, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.
Since the system started, funding for Maine’s jails has increased by 20 percent, according to the report. In Androscoggin County, the local tax levy for the jail was capped at $4.2 million. This year, the budget is $5.8 million, an increase of $1.6 million, paid by the state.
“That’s an awful lot of money,” Desjardins said. But the gap isn’t as big as it seems. Traditional parts of the pre-2008 jail budget were taken out before the state set its cap. In effect, some expenses were switched over to the county.
Desjardins has had to reduce education at his jail and is threatened with having to lay off personnel if more money doesn’t come in.
“I have no choice,” he said.
How full is ‘full?’
One need is relief from overcrowding.
Across the system, capacity was at 90 percent in 2011, according to the report. On average, 1,667 of the jail system’s 1,848 beds were taken. However, most correctional experts consider 85 percent occupancy to be full.
The reason is that jails need space to accommodate a sudden increase in arrests or, more important, the flexibility to move inmates.
It’s called “functional capacity.” Desjardins compares it to a parent with three arguing children and only two bedrooms. When a jail nears its capacity, instances of suicide and assaults climb dramatically.
“You need someplace to separate them,” he said.
The jail network has no system to set functional capacity limits. Each sheriff and jail administrator set their own.
Both the Cumberland County Jail and Two Bridges Regional Jail have refused to fill every bed. In May, the last time Two Bridges’ population surged near its capacity, one of Westrum’s corrections officers was attacked from behind by an inmate and assaulted.
“He was bruised up pretty good,” Westrum said. Two other officers were hurt in the scuffle.
Westrum is adamant that he will not add inmates when he can help it. “I’m not going to put my officers in harm’s way.”
Commissioner Ponte said he agrees that such standards must be set, but he believes they can come later.
“While they’re absolutely right, now is not the time to be taking beds off the shelf,” he said. “We should work toward that, and I agree wholeheartedly that you can’t run jails at 100 percent capacity. It will not work.”
One partial fix might be found in the report.
It suggests loosening the 72-hour limit for the jails in Franklin and Oxford counties. Inmates needing less supervision could stay there longer, the report said.
Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant, a supporter of the network, agrees.
“We’ve got some jails that are busting at the seams, and then we’ve got others like mine,” he said. “I’ve got two people upstairs [in the jail] and I could hold 40-something.”
Desjardins also believes the Legislature, which funds the network, ought to understand what the jails are facing, something also highlighted in the report.
“We’re not good at asking for what we need,” Desjardins said.
And though he sympathizes with Delong in Somerset County, Desjardins thinks county leaders must take the lead in finding solutions — and not just shut their doors.
“At the end of the day, we need to be able to all work together,” Desjardins said. “As sheriffs, if we can’t do that and square this away, I’m afraid somebody else will. The state may come in or whatever, and we may not like what they provide us.”
Crowded? Oh well, let them have at it, not our fault they are inconvenienced with their overcrowded accomodations.
It’s not the people incarcerated that are at risk; I don’t think anybody cares if they are inconvenienced. It is the safety of the corrections officers that is a concern.
No it isn’t our fault, I say its fine to overcrowd them BUT they need more staff. This one guard to 100 inmates is not ok. Give them the staff to at least insure the safety of the ones dealing with the inmates. I don’t really care about the inmates getting their butts kicked, it is the staff and the public I worry about.
Had they gone with Baldacci’s plan rather than the sheriff and county commissioners version of how to run things then jail/prison consolidation might well have worked. Unfortunately the local lads screwed around with things and now it doesn’t work. Baldacci was right, the counties were spending way too much on jails and something had to be done. Perhaps now they will reconsider the original Baldacci plan.
Baldacci’s plan was more screwed up.
It never fails, the bigger the government entity, the less efficient it is run.
Don’t vote for those in the system right now.
Stop locking people up for victimless crimes.
It’s the same situation with the Maine Prison System (different than County Jails); specifically, I am talking about the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, Maine. I know somebody that is there for driving offenses who is in maximum security because there is no room in the area he should be in. He screwed up and needs to serve time, but I am sure that the $ per day factor is higher for maximum security prisoners than it is for minimum.
They need to stop putting people in jail for growing marijauna; it is a victimless crime and should be LEGAL, period. That would free up a lot of space and resources.
While I’m at it, I will also say that they need to keep people who have violated a protection order IN JAIL… those are the dangerous ones.
No unless he is classified as maximum security inmate then the cost is the same as the other prisoners.
I was assuming that they have a higher ratio of staff to guests in the maximum security area, thus costing more $
Stop locking people up for victimless crimes and using the jails as a shelter for the mentally ill and drug addicted. Solved.
.
This issue may have started with the previous Gov., but it’s been elevated to a new level under the new. Summing it up; jails don’t have money to pay operating costs and they close housing units. Some who would be locked up are now let go and return to your neighborhoods. Some of the other “innocent until proven guilty” are moved into cells in State Prisons and into cells with the convicted and under the same limitations on liberties as those convicted at the state level. This is currently occurring at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham and the Maine State Prison in Warren. It’s not a complicated matter, just uncoordinated by our leaders incompetence. The legislature restricts the budget on the capability for incarceration, but the courts increase convictions? The results will always be early release, overcrowding, more violent jails and prisons, higher recidivism, and more jeopardy placed on the citizens of this State.
Replace the sheriffs, contract them, if they do not produce, fire them. The midcoast could use some educated, not experience, people who care about taxpayers, not just vote getters.
I am so tired of County Sheriff’s trying to build their financial Empires on the backs of Taxpayers. They whine all the time about over crowding. Most of the people locked up are on misdemeanor charges, cant afford the fine charges, traffic charges or minor marijuana charges. How about an ankle bracelet and send these people home to be monitored. Maine can’t afford to build these new Castles for the Local Sheriff’s of Nottingham’s to use for their pleasure and enrichment.
Electronic monitoring costs alot of money. The equipment needed, training and enforcement.
Makes PERFECT sense and saves a ton of money (NOT) to send people all the way from the Houlton Hilton to York for jail- BRILLIANT !!! Well done county Sheriffs and county commissioners- you all were dimwitted enough to get yourselves into this mess you better plan on getting yourselves out of the mess without any assistance from the Maine tax payers. Any of you ever take a course on business management ?? Apparently not as evidenced by your fiscal and administrative bumbling…….the next time a deputy pulls you over and asks ‘do you know why I stopped you?’….you can honestly reply…’because you got all D’s in high school?’
Bravo, good points! I know of a couple of sheriffs, and I hesitate to use that term because they are more politicians than anything else, who need education…….elected because they know more people than the other candidate does, yes folks I am talking about the midcoast. Time for new sheriffs, not spenders. I overheard a conversation once from one of the sheriffs during a budget meeting, telling the jail administrator not to sweat it because the sheriff had purposely bloated the amount requested so that they could get approved at a level that was really needed. Quite a revelation from a LAW-enforcement official, the honesty there is a matter of course in that organization.
This was not all done buy the county Sheriffs ( Read the article ) it was started by Gov. Baldacci to take control of all jail’s, like he did the schools. We all see how that is working out. This was bastard child that resulted from it. The bottom line is we need to hold people accountable for their actions and it’s going to cost us!
Ummmm I DID read the article. Do you work for the Sheriff’s department?
‘In August 2007, Baldacci proposed a full state takeover of the county jail system and the closure of four small jails, including those in Franklin and Oxford counties. State corrections officials argued that counties were spending too much money on jails and that the state could do better.
The counties pushed back.
Sheriffs, commissioners and legislators came up with an alternative plan that would stitch the county jails together into a network they called “One Maine, One System…..’
‘The state promised $1 billion in savings to Maine property taxes over 20 years.
The new system kicked off on July 1, 2009.’
Not working so good is it? The state prison in Warren has empty beds but won’t allow the prisoners they shipped out to the counties back because they dont have the staffing because officers have quit over how they were treated.
Reluctance to talk about the Augusta guru’s is glaring in that article. State mandates to the County jails without money to implement is common. Sound familiar? Sort of like taxation without representation to use an analogy. Then comes the guru’s with their big heads full of power to inspect a mandate, and you have more chaos. Augusta bloats, another issue is the Court Protection system, wow, you talk about bloating, but thats another story.
the sherifs dont want to put their officers in harms way.That different then Ponte he does not care about those that work for state facilities.The state systm is in chaos also. Im all for saving money but not at workers safety. Ponte is nothing but a hatchet man same as lehman was a few administrations ago.
Here’s one solution: Quit arrresting people for the fun of it and just crack down on the serious offenders. I worked at a correctional facility in maine and the majority were in there for something stupid like being on probation and in possession of Ibuprofen or something….don’t we have anything better to prosecute than that?
…..
wouldn’t it be nice if we had a shortage of —–INMATES !
This is Everywhere USA. Parenting begins at home. If more parents would try harder to guide their kids to a happy and educated life, then we would not have this over crowding problem in jails. Drug dealers are as bad as those convicted of murder and should get the same sentences.
Start sending messages from the judges in the courts.
Reinstate the death penalty and that will reduce the overcrowding problem.They need tougher penalities not just a slap on the wrist.but if the higher ups and lawmakers get a slap on the wrist whats sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander
….
surely cut down on over crowding and taxpayers spending money on them
……
How about we start with the bail system in Maine, it needs serious changes. Each bail commissioner is different and sets the bail to what they think is apporiate. Stop issueing warrants for unpaid fines and fees esp if its under 500 dollars. Put liens on the peoples welfare benefits, tax returns, houses and cars and licneses. Change some of the crimes to summons only. I work in corrections and I’m sick of the cops in my area arresting people just to get them on bail conditions so they have an excuse to arrest them later and keep them in jail because they are suspected of commiting something greater but have no proof.
Also another thing bothering me is if someone commits a crime in the state prison system they shouldnt be housed at the county level until the case is heard. Even if their release date comes up they should be housed in the state facility. Probation violators should be housed in the state prisons as they are technically on a state sentence. County jails should be for true pre trial and convicted and sentenced to under 9 and a day. They shouldn’t be used as baby sitters for the states problem children.
The problem is not overcrowding in the jails. That is the end result of the real problem. The real issue is a very, very, very slow legal system. There was a study done a few years ago that showed that compared to the rest of the nation, people in Maine spend six times longer locked up in a pre-trial situation. Six times as long. So, it’s not rocket science to figure that a person spending that much extra time in jail before even going to court to get sentenced is going to cost more money. What needs to be done is to kick these lawyers and judges in the rear end and make them put these cases through faster. People’s rights to a speedy and fair trial are being violated, and it is costing taxpayers piles of money to have these people sit in jail waiting to go to trial. All the while, the judges and lawyers work banker’s hours or less, and the taxpayer picks up the tab for it. Instead of looking at the results of the problem, we might want to give the cause a closer look. Then, the results will change.