By Peter McGuire
Central Maine
AUGUSTA — The Kennebec County sheriff is asking local police departments to forgo making arrests for minor nonviolent offenses because the county jail is chronically overcrowded and faces a potential funding crisis.
The Augusta jail already uses pretrial services and alternative sentencing to ease an inmate population that regularly exceeds the 147 inmates authorized by the state. Many of the inmates held there haven’t been convicted of a crime but are waiting, unable to make bail, for a trial or other disposition of their case.
If municipal police limit the number of arrests they make — people who need to be taken to the Kennebec County Correctional Facility because they can’t pay cash bail — it can help keep the inmate population within acceptable limits, according to Sheriff Randall Liberty.
“We’re just trying to work smarter with the finite resources we have at the correctional facility,” Liberty said.
Full story: Kennebec County sheriff asks local police to limit arrests amid jail overcrowding