THOMASTON – The Maine State Prison crafts program is being phased out in favor of an assembly-line operation at the new prison.

“This will be a much more efficient operation,” Warden Jeffrey Merrill said, “and we’ll be able to involve many more inmates.”

Inmates have been making crafts for sale at the Route 1 prison showroom for decades. The program will be shut down when the new 916-bed prison opens in Warren in November.

The new operation will make furniture and other knickknacks and will be staffed by inmates on a mass-production team.

The crafts program now sustains itself financially but had troubles bringing in enough money to cover its costs in the past.

The program gives inmates a way to make restitution to their victims and help support their families. Participants also learn skills they can use upon their release, Merrill said.

Under the current program, about 60 inmates create the designs for their items – including model ships, clocks and table lamps – make them in the prison shop and offer them for sale in the prison showroom.

The new program will allow the number of participants to increase to 300 eventually and create an equal pay scale for all of the state’s correctional institutions, Merrill said.

Some maximum-security prisoners at Thomaston make more money than their medium-security counterparts at the Windham Correctional Center – creating a disincentive for inmates to improve themselves, Merrill said.

Inmates in the crafts program make an average of $3,500 to $4,000 each year. Although some may make less money in the new program, more inmates will be able to participate.

Long-term plans call for the possible opening of a second products showroom in the state, Merrill said.

A privately run prison-crafts store, Woods to Goods, now operates on Route 1 in York. J.D. Maloney has owned the outlet for five years. He fears that the end of the crafts program will reduce the goods available at the shop.

Merrill believes, however, that the product line will become more varied with the new program.

In 1980, disclosures revealed that the crafts program was virtually controlled by “novelty kings,” the leaders of an underground operation within the prison. Authorities said that some of the novelty kings made as much as $15,000, more than some prison guards at the time, and used the money for drugs or to pay other inmates to force others into participation.