Bangor Daily News
BANGOR — Although Maine’s crime rate has dropped, the number of people held in county jails has doubled in the last two decades. Maine, like other states, is holding too many low-risk offenders in jail, stressing jail facilities and staff and raising jail costs.
Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Leigh Saufley addressed this head on in her annual address to lawmakers Tuesday. More than 60 percent of county jail inmates are awaiting trial. As Saufley noted, some need to be in jail because they otherwise would try to flee; others pose a risk to the community. But, many don’t need to be in jail. They failed to pay a fine or post bail or failed to appear in court for a charge that likely wouldn’t have resulted in jail time. Worse, the chief justice said, “many are mentally ill and unable to control their behaviors long enough to stay out of jail.”
“Defendants who present a risk of flight or violence need the attention and resources of the jails,” she said. “But many others could be better addressed with the focused attention of less costly resources.”
Between 1993 and 2011, the state’s county jail population grew from a daily average of 738 to 1,667, according to a report by the National Institute of Corrections. The population of Maine Department of Corrections facilities grew as well but not nearly as much. As a result, the percentage of offenders held in county jails grew from a third in 1993 to 45 percent in 2011. The report cited the increase in mandatory sentences and an increase in the number of offenders who stayed in jail because they could not or chose not to pay their fines.
The increased inmate population, which is spread unevenly across the state, has stressed county jails and budgets. It is one reason for the push to consolidate the system in 2008. Because of turf battles and unclear lines of authority, the system, which included a new Board of Corrections to oversee it, has never functioned well. A group tasked by the Legislature to study the Board of Corrections and its operation of the county jails officially declared the system broken in 2013.
Things have only gotten worse since then, with Gov. Paul LePage refusing to appoint members to the board. It now has no quorum and has stopped meeting. The board’s two employees also have quit.
A stop-gap measure approved earlier this month by lawmakers and LePage gives the jails more money and temporarily puts the state’s corrections commissioner in charge.
Without resolving underlying problems — such as holding so many poor and mentally ill people in jail during pre-trial proceedings — the situation won’t get better, no matter who is in charge.
Saufley offered ways out of this morasse beginning with enhanced risk assessment to determine which offenders should go to jail and who would do better not to.
A 2013 study by the Linda and and John Arnold Foundation found that those who were jailed before trial were more likely to be sentenced to jail and serve longer terms than those who were not held in jail. Worse, those who were jailed were more likely to reoffend.
“Put bluntly, without better up-front assessments, pretrial detention may make less dangerous people more dangerous, and we may be missing the need to detain people who currently present a serious threat for violence,” Saufley said. “The Maine Legislature has already mandated risk assessment for domestic violence charges. Applying similar tools to other charges could be equally effective.”
Sen. Eric Brakey, a freshman lawmaker from Auburn, has proposed doing just this by eliminating cash bail and replacing it with an evaluation system.
The Republican lawmaker said he “seeks to remedy some problems we are having there, particularly around overcrowding, the use of tax dollars, which is not very efficient and effective, and also concerns about civil liberties of people who are in these jails and have not been convicted of any crime at this point.”
He notes that offenders sometimes face fines as little as $50 that they can’t afford. They are then jailed, at a cost of a $100 a day. This makes no sense for taxpayers or those charged but not convicted of crimes.
Instead of simply allocating more money to county jails, lawmakers should seriously consider this proposal.