BANGOR — Being a “snitch” can produce a lighter-than-usual prison sentence, but the activity doesn’t make a convict popular with other inmates, a fact a Somerset County man has discovered.

Jason Travis Stevens, who is from the Skowhegan area, told officials in advance about a planned jailbreak 18 months ago at the Kennebec County Jail in Augusta. For that, he got four years knocked off his initial sentence of 11 2/3 years in prison. He had pleaded guilty earlier to being a felon in possession of a firearm.

U.S. District Judge Morton Brody levied the sentence in January 1998. Stevens was before Brody again Tuesday and, through his attorney, asked for an additional six years to be taken off his sentence.

Stevens, because of his willingness to give information, is being threatened with significant harm, according to his attorney. The judge acknowledged the threats as real and serious, but reduced Stevens’ sentence by only two years.

The effects of the dramatic yet foiled jailbreak still are being felt by Stevens nearly two years after the event was to have taken place.

Stevens, who has lived in Skowhegan, Madison and Starks, is serving his time in a federal prison outside Maine. Officials declined to disclose its location out of concern for his safety, they said.

Concern for safety issues ran so high Tuesday that Bangor attorney Brett Baber cautioned a reporter before Stevens’ hearing to “be careful what you print” because “people could get hurt.”

Also known as Clifford Whitt, Stevens was jailed at the Kennebec County Jail in the fall of 1997. He was contacted about being part of the jailbreak plan.

Masterminded by Kenneth Meader, 49, of Augusta, the intended breakout was planned for the Columbus Day holiday weekend and involved using guns to fend off guards while Meader and other inmates scaled a wall in the jail’s recreation yard. After Stevens’ tip, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms worked undercover to expose the plan and to arrest Meader and his son Jody Meader, 21.

In April, Kenneth Meader was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the jailbreak plan. The time is in addition to a 35-year sentence Meader already is serving for firearms and drug convictions connected to the 1995 kidnapping of a girlfriend. His son was sentenced in December 1998 to six months of home detention and two years probation for conspiracy and assisting an escape.

Brody’s decision was four years less than what Stevens had requested. It was one year more than the 12-month reduction requested by the U.S. government.

The judge expressed concern about Stevens’ safety but said the man’s predicament was the result of a conscious choice.

“The primary reason [a defendant chooses to cooperate with the government] is to get a reduction in sentence,” Brody said.

“The assistance given to the government cannot control the whole sentencing process,” he added.

“If you carried the defendant’s wishes to the extreme, the cooperation [Stevens gave to authorities] would equal the sentence,” the judge said.