Prison officials seek solution to overcrowding

BANGOR – The overwhelming defeat voters dealt to the $25 million prison bond issue in Tuesday’s election came as no surprise to Department of Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson.

With nearly 30 years under his belt in the prison arena, from guard to probation officer to warden to commissioner, Magnusson is well aware of how voters feel about spending money on prisons.

Citizens want criminals to go to jail and they push for longer and longer sentences, but are rarely willing to back those wishes up with the additional money it takes to run an operation with an increasing population, Magnusson said Wednesday morning after perusing the numbers that showed the bond issue failing by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio.

The entire prison system is budgeted for 1,779 prisoners, but on Tuesday room had to be found to house 1,850.

Magnusson said he and his staff are working on a plan to address the overpopulation problem without the benefit of any new construction. He said he hopes to have a report completed sometime next week.

“We’ll be looking at perhaps probation and graduated sanctions and supervised confinement,” he said, “as well as finding more bed space on units that have been closed because they are so costly to operate. We may have to reopen those units. It will come as an expense, but we need to find bed space somewhere.”

The bond measure failed in every county except Washington County, where many of the residents campaigned in favor of it, including town officials in Machias where the prison would have been built. The county’s legislative delegation also favored it.

In much of the rest of the state, it was clear some voters knew little about the bond issue. With no groups on either side saying much in support or opposition, Magnusson figures some voters didn’t know much about it when they entered the voting booth Tuesday.

“We tried to get the message out,” he said. “But in talking to people it was clear that they saw this issue as tied directly to the budget deficit. We tried to make it clear that this bond issue was not going to increase that deficit but that was a hard message to get across.”

Magnusson said others couldn’t understand why the state, which just tore down the old state prison in Thomaston, now wanted to build a new facility.

“I think there was a sense that they had spent enough on corrections. I mean there is a new facility in Warren and there’s been an investment in our juvenile facilities. I think they just felt they didn’t want to spend any more with the economy the way it is.”

But with an anticipated “bed deficit” of 200 beds by June 2003, Magnusson said his office has been busy coming up with a plan to address the ever-present and ever-growing problem of over-population.

If passed, the $25 million bond would have built a new $13.9 million, 152-bed minimum-security prison on donated land in Machias to replace the dilapidated Downeast Correctional Facility in Bucks Harbor. The remaining $11.1 million would have been used to improve security and build a new long-term infirmary at the Maine Correctional Center in South Windham.

Both projects would have saved taxpayers money, officials have argued, by reducing operation costs at the Downeast Correctional Facility by about 34 percent and greatly reducing the number of inmates hospitalized at taxpayer expense because the prison system does not have a sufficient long-term infirmary.

“The new infirmary in Windham would have greatly reduced our health care costs by allowing us to provide those services on site,” Magnusson said. “Now if we have an inmate hospitalized we have to dedicate one or two guards just for that one person while they are at the hospital. That comes at a great expense along with the costs of the medical care.”

Magnusson stressed Wednesday that despite the inefficient and costly maintenance at the Bucks Harbor facility, the state is going to have to invest the money necessary to keep it open because of the growing need for more beds.

“The investment we are going to have to make in the wastewater treatment system alone at that facility is going to be huge,” Magnusson said. “But we’re going to have to do it. We didn’t say lightly that building a new facility was going to be cheaper than repairing the old one. We studied it hard and took a long hard look at the numbers before making the decision to try to get the new building. But just because the bond issue failed we can’t just give up. We have to do what we can to take care of these problems.”

Magnusson advocated hard for the bond issue. He said the effects of the decision by voters might be just one more issue on the plate of Gov.-elect John Baldacci and the commissioner he appoints.

When asked whether he would consider staying on as commissioner if asked by Baldacci, Magnusson sighed slightly and said, “I don’t know the answer to that right now.”