Down East hearing

An advisory board charged by Gov. King with redesigning Maine’s bloated prison system has until the end of the month, just two more meetings, to develop its recommendations.

The first of those meetings is today. This usually would be the time to wrap things up, to sort out the final details, but this group has still has a lot of work to do. It still has to hear Washington County out.

Eight prisons scattered throughout the state plus per-inmate costs among the highest in the nation add up to a problem that is overdue for fixing. But the committee’s preliminary solution — a two-prison system created by expanding the Supermax in Warren and the Maine Correctional Institution in Windham — makes sense only if considered in a vacuum.

That would close the Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport, a minimum-security lockup that opened just 12 years ago amid promises of economic benefit to one of Maine’s poorest regions, that created 70 jobs in a county with the state’s highest unemployment rate.

On the advisory board’s agenda today is a presentation by the Downeast Retention Committee, a group of legislators, local officials, community and business leaders who have banded together to stave off one more assault upon their struggling economy.

They will propose that DCF, established in 1985 in an inadequate former military installation, be replaced elsewhere in the region with a 200-inmate minimum-security facility now slated to be one of several additions to the Windham complex. The Downeast delegation has several good arguments to make: DCF has always had a willing and stable workforce, as evidenced by the lowest staff turnover rate in the system; it consistently turns in some of the lowest per-inmate costs, despite an unsuitable, awkwardly designed building; and the elimination of 70 jobs created not terribly long ago to help the depressed region would be an unconsionably heartless act by the state.

Two other points the advisory panel must consider: the location of correctional facilites is commonly used by other states as an economic development tool; and Maine, a largish state by New England standards, should have a prison system that serves a semblance of the entire state, not just midcoast and south.

The Downeast Retention Committee has worked fast and hard to develop a reasonable plan that will work to the benefit of Washington County and to the entire state. It’s a plan that deserves a fair hearing and a fair chance.