December 31, 2008     Reported By: Anne Ravana

Governor John Baldacci is calling for cuts in the state Department of Corrections that would result in the closing of one dormitory at Charleston Correctional Facility in Penobscot County. That would mean the elimination of 15 jobs and the possible transfer of 45 prisoners to county jails. At Charleston, administrators and inmates are anxious, and worried the inmates won't have the same access to work programs and training opportunities.

The Charleston Correctional Facility, located about 25 miles north of Bangor, looks more like a work camp than a prison. Just before sundown, inmates walk briskly around the open, unfenced campus. Some are just returning from a day of work for the Department of Transportation and heading to the dining hall for dinner. Others are splitting, hauling and stacking wood beside the heating plant.

"This is our heating plant, boiler room. You know, as you can see, logs. We have crews that are cutting out in the woods.  Logs come here, these guys split them," says Jeff Morin, director of the Charleston Correctional Facility. "It's one more opportunity that we have to save the state a little bit of money and green the place up a little bit."

Morin greets both inmates and staff by name as he gives a tour of the campus. Back in his office, he talks about what the inmates do every day at the minimum security state prison. "We do a lot of community restitution work. This year alone, we are up over 40,000 hours of service to local towns, nonprofits and the state of Maine."

Inmates typically spend fewer than three years at Charleston, and that can be their entire sentence or the tail end of it. With good behavior, inmates are able to participate in work projects, such as repairing roads and bridges for the Department of Transportation. This year, they saved the town of Dover Foxcroft a quarter of a million dollars by renovating the town office. In addition to work, inmates participate in substance abuse counseling, parenting classes, and get help learning to read, write, earn a GED or college diploma.  Morin describes a popular class called Thinking for a Change.

"The men learn to look at things from a difference perspective, learn new skills that they may not have had, such as anger management. And they actually do some role playing. They're building a skill rather than talk therapy. It's them actually putting to use what they're being taught and kind of reflecting on how they've done things in the past and how they can probably do it better in the future."

Morin is concerned about the future of some of the 142 inmates, most of whom leave the facility with a job waiting for them. Earlier this month, the Governor announced the lastest round of state budget cuts, which includes more than a million dollars from the Department of Corrections. That would mean closing a dorm at Charleston and reducing the facility to 90 inmates by February first. Morin says some of the population will be leaving by then anyway, but several will likely be sent to Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset and to the Cumberland County and York County jails. "In a jail, it's more or less a--it's a warehouse.  I mean, there's not a lot to do as an inmate. Your time from one hour to the next, there's not a lot of change to that. There's nothing look forward to."

Bobby Miller is an inmate at Charleston. While serving a 64-month sentence for aggravated assault, he's been working for the DOT. He says he's picked up some new skills that may help him find work once he's out.  And he says there's an important psychological component to being in touch with the outside world on a daily basis. "You get away from being dislocated from the society. If you're able to work on an off grounds crew, or such as like the Department of Transportation, when you're out in the community every day and around people, you don't become institutionalized, which is a big thing. When you do get released back into society, that transitional process, which is so important, and people lose sight of that, helps you stay on that track of being able to stay associated with the community itself and not become dislocated."

Miller says the last thing he wants is to finish his sentence behind the walls of a county jail, and he says his fellow inmates are anxious about who might be sent away from Charleston.  Denise Lord, associate commissioner for the Department of Corrections, says her office is doing all it can to keep the Charleston inmates where they are. "The plan is to stop sending prisoners to Charleston and slowly reduce the population there so we have one unit remaining. The prisoners there, our hope is that they'll be able to stay there and complete the programs they've begun."

Lord says that similar programs aren't offered at jails because jails serve a more temporary purpose. "It's more difficult to offer those kinds of programs within a jail setting because prisoners are usually there for very short periods of time. The benefit we have is that prisoners at Charleston have at least a year and sometimes longer before release."

The positions for the second housing unit at Charleston were only funded through this year, and given the state's financial situation, Lord says the DOC did not think it could ask for additional funding to keep the positions.  Governor Baldacci's spokesman David Farmer says the cuts at Charleston are one of many changes the state will have to make to operate with significantly reduced revenues.  "We recognize that that creates hardship particularly for the guards, the prison officers, and perhaps for some of the prisoners."

Farmer says a unified corrections system more efficiently uses space and resources. "The bottom line is we're not running a hotel. We have to operate government in a way that is as efficient as possible while safeguarding people's safety and their rights, but those rights don't include getting to decide where they stay." 

Shenna Bellows, director of The Maine Civil LIberties Union, says she has "grave concerns" about the cuts at Charleston. She says opportunities for job training give inmates a chance to become contributing members of society when they are released. "We need to be careful not to be penny wise and pound foolish in the current environment. We spend a tremendous amount of money incarcerating people in this state and the least the government can do is make sure it will actually result in improved public safety."

The cuts are scheduled to take place February first, assuming the legislature enacts the supplemental budget by that date. There will be a public hearing on the decision on Monday at 4 p.m. before the Appropriations Committee in the Statehouse.