Charleston concerned about closure of prison > Region depends on work done by inmates

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CHARLESTON — Eighteen years ago, Charleston residents were worried that their quiet community would be disrupted with the opening of a prison in their midst.

Now they’re worried about its planned closing.

The Charleston Correctional Facility is scheduled to close in 2001 as part of a multimillion-dollar restructuring plan by the Department of Corrections. The adult facility will close when the expansion of the Northern Maine Juvenile Detention Center on the same site is completed.

The planned closing of the minimum security prison, once an Air Force base, is viewed as critical by some regional town officials, who have come to depend upon the facility’s public restitution program. This year alone the inmates have spent 41,000 hours completing a variety of community tasks, from constructing playgrounds to remodeling facilities.

Like officials in Bucks Harbor, who waged a campaign to save that facility and its public restitution program, town officials in the Charleston area have joined together to urge Gov. Angus King and corrections officials to retain a small population of adults at Charleston to continue the restitution work.

“Public restitution up here is very important to the different towns, and we’re very sensitive to that,” Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson told a group of Charleston residents and town officials on Monday evening.

Although he offered no promises, Magnusson said state officials were investigating ways to continue the restitution work, as well as the wood harvesting program now under way at the facility. Options he mentioned included keeping open one dormitory of adults on the site, transporting inmates from the Bangor Pre-Release Center to the region for the work, or, he said, “the less likely” possibility of using juveniles from the detention facility .

“Charleston is a priority for us; we want to continue to do that [restoration work],” Magnusson said. “We honestly do want to be the best neighbors we can be.”

Although no one expressed fear at Monday’s meeting about the change-over from minimum-security adults to all classifications of juveniles, there is concern in the community, according to Benjamin Zeichick, chairman of the Charleston Board of Selectmen.

Zeichick said later that “there’s a big difference between minimum-security adults and an assortment of juveniles at different risk levels.”

The board chairman said the town of Charleston is very used to adults who are considered low risk. “There’s always a concern when there’s something new,” he added.

The economic impact of the closing of the adult facility will be offset by the opening of the expanded juvenile facility. Ground-breaking for the new $23 million addition, which will be surrounded by a security fence, is expected in March of next year, with completion scheduled for March 2001. The expanded detention center will house 140 juveniles, including girls, and will have a staff of 189, an increase of 60 positions.

Magnusson was told Monday that some residents were upset with the way they were treated during the hiring process when the juvenile center first opened. Some who had applied were never interviewed for positions that were given to non-residents.

Some residents felt that the town of Charleston was promised jobs when the facility was first opened, and they later thought the town did not get what they expected.

“We want to hire people from the area,” said Magnusson. “We need to give them a chance to apply.” He said he’d make sure that a job fair was scheduled in the town to promote the new jobs. “I think we can do better than we did,” he added.

Magnusson noted that candidates for the various openings, which will include teaching and professional positions, must meet the qualifications and criteria for the jobs. He said current employees at the adult facility will be given consideration for the jobs, as well.

The commissioner praised the employees at both facilities. He said the state was not closing the Charleston facility because it was expensive or because of a bad staff; rather, the staff was among the best in the state.

Magnusson noted that for years, state officials have been trying to find ways to improve corrections in Maine. Outside consultants identified Maine’s problem as having too many small prisons, which are antiquated or inherently flawed in their layouts, scattered around the state. These same consultants also determined there were not enough programs being offered to rehabilitate inmates to reduce repeat offenses.

Magnusson said Monday that Maine has one of the 10 highest operating costs for adult prisoners in the country at $72 per capita, per day. Armed with the projection that the adult prison population will increase by another 500 in the next five years, the commissioner said Maine needed to increase capacity but lower costs.

In comparison, Magnusson said the state had one of the lower operating costs in the country for juvenile inmates, but he acknowledged that the state was not doing an adequate job with these young people. He said it will cost the state more to operate the new juvenile facility, but it will be in line with the costs of other states.

Asked why the state would consider closing the Charleston facility, which aside from the pre-release centers has the lowest per-capita, per-day costs for adult inmates in the state of $50 a day, Magnusson said it was difficult to compare costs. He said the Charleston facility has the “so-called best inmates” and therefore requires less in security measures compared to other facilities, whose costs are more because they serve higher classifications of prisoners.

“I’d hate to see you pull out what you’ve got,” one Charleston resident told Magnusson. “There’s been very few problems there, and they have good programs and it’s economical.”

Under the proposed restructuring plan, women housed at the Charleston facility will be transferred to the Maine Correctional Center, and the men will be transferred either to the Bolduc Correctional Facility in Warren or the Maine Correctional Center in South Windham.

Magnusson said that most of the buildings at the Charleston adult facility were wooden, in “very bad shape,” and did not meet national standards.

“We’re trying to become much more efficient, we’re trying to deal with our increasing populations and we’re trying to provide more programs,” Magnusson said. The state also wants its facilities to be accredited nationally.

“We have not been doing a good job in how we’ve provided services to juvenile offenders, and this is going to be a major step forward between what we’re doing there and what we’re doing at the youth center,” the commissioner said. As a result of the restructuring, he expects a much better treatment system and improved capacity at a much lower cost.

“I think it’s very exciting,” the commissioner said Tuesday. “I know the people up there are comfortable with the adult facility. The staff has done an incredibly good job up there with the existing buildings.”

Magnusson said “the positive thing is that we’re going to have, ultimately, one of the best juvenile facilities in the country.

“It’s going to provide 61 new jobs to the area, and it’s going to bring a lot of construction into the area, and it’s going to ultimately be a state-of-the-art juvenile facility,” he said.

Zeichick said town officials would work closely with the department to ensure that the town’s needs are met.

“We’re trying to be good neighbors to the prison, and they’re trying to be good neighbors to us, and we’re sure that with a lot of cooperation and hard work we can be good neighbors together,” the board chairman said.