Maine Associate Corrections Commissioner Denise Lord confirms that the disciplinary actions followed from an ongoing investigation into the April 23rd beating death of Maine State Prison inmate Sheldon "Shelly" Weinstein. The actions were discovered by Village Soup, an online community network that publishes several Maine newspapers, including the Herald Gazette in Rockland.

Scott Gardner, an attorney representing Weinstein's estate, says the Corrections Department's response supports his claim that Weinstein died from injuries that could have been prevented by the prison guards. "About four days before he was found dead in his cell he was brutally beaten, and you have to remember that Shelly was a 64-year-old man in a wheelchair who was a Type 1 diabetic."

Gardner is seeking more than $1 million in compensation from the state, based on his claim that corrections officers were well aware that Weinstein's life was in danger. Convicted of gross sexual assualt on an seven-year-old girl, Weinstein reportedly lived in constant fear of being attacked by young violent inmates who, Gardner says were only too eager to enhance their prison reputations.

"There's no way that that sort of assaultive behavior and intimidation of an inmate can take place without at least the tacit approval of corrections officers -- I mean, this is a maximum security prison, they see and know everything that goes on," Gardner says. "Essentially, this is, tragically, to be expected. When you have a culture of tolerance, a culture of vigilante justice in a prison system which is tolerated and maybe even condoned by corrections officials, these sorts of incidents are going to happen."

"The system doesn't think that way -- because you have a bad apple doesn't mean the whole barrel's bad," says state Sen. Stan Gerzovsky, a Brunswick Democrat, who co-chairs the Legislature's Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. He says that Maine's corrections system places a premium on prisoner rehabilitation.

"When you have a system that overwhelmingly tries to do the right thing, overwhelmingly the guards try to lead a good role for these inmates, they try to mentor them in a lot of ways, a lot of the guards go way above and beyond the call," Gerzovsky says. "Sometimes you get a guard, or you get an individual, that lets his personal feelings get in the way of his professional training."

"It's not a terribly high paying job, so attraction and retention of officers has been a challenge," says state Rep. Anne Haskell, a South Portland Democrat who co-chairs the committee with Gerzovsky. Haskell says the state's corrections department, and its officers, have been faced with a number of new challenges.

"It's a very difficult work environment," Haskell says. "We continue to reduce the funds that we provide to them to do it with. We've moved from one type of supervision to another -- instead of line supervision, we're in unit management, and that's a very different kind of philosophical approach to corrections, and we're transitioning to 12-hour days."

Gardner says other inmates may finally get a safer environment as the result of the state's disciplinary action. But he adds that's of little consolation to the family Weinstein left behind. State corrections officials say the state is continuing its investigation into the inmate's beating death. No charges have been filed.