Improving prisons

Twenty-two states are under court-ordered consent decrees because of conditions of their jails and prisons. Maine is not, and a bill before the Legislature, LD 1492, would help ensure it avoids this expensive, antagonistic distinction by using national accreditation to improve training, especially for addressing mental illness and substance abuse. The bill is an honest look at issues the general public would rather ignore and properly recognizes the important role the correctional system plays in Maine.

LD 1492 establishes training for corrections and law-enforcement office and treatment standards and psychiatric evaluations for inmates. Most of the standards would be covered in a national accreditation that would be required, according to the bill, five years from now. The standards are through the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections, part of the American Correctional Association, and include safety measures, sanitation, food service, fiscal controls and rules and discipline. Currently, no Maine jail or prison is accredited, although the state prison system has begun working on it, as has Cumberland County.

Corrections officials like the idea of a national standard and accreditation. They sensibly prefer solely the accreditation to the additional standards in the bill, reasoning that as the standards evolve, accreditation would too, but the bill’s other language would not. The officials worry, however, that this ambitious and needed improvement in prison practices will not be met with enough money to achieve them. Indeed, legislators would have a hard time finding any funds for this in the budget turmoil of Augusta. This is particularly serious for the counties, which would then see the standards in LD 1492 as a hefty unfunded mandate. Even the advocates of the bill say they do not want this.

On the positive side, the correctional association reports that prisons with accreditation have lower liability insurance and, in most cases, “the resulting savings in insurance premiums more than offset the actual cost of accreditation.” More to the point, accreditation is a good defense against lawsuits. More humanely, adhering to national standards guards against the kind of degradation experienced, for instance, by the Maine Youth Center, which required expensive catch-up. More for the staff, accreditation is said to boost morale and give the staff a stronger sense of professionalism.

All wonderful and all good reasons to pursue the idea. Lawmakers might start with this: absent money, streamline the bill’s language to emphasize accreditation and make the bill a resolve, giving the department incentive to work funding for these improvements into its proposed future budgets. The five-year deadline might not be realistic, but there is an opportunity now to get started on this process and then work quickly as practical to meet its goals.