Parole eyed to ease crowded prisons 17-member commission to review sentencing, reports on released inmates

AUGUSTA – Maine prisons and county jails are at or hovering near capacity, and the reinstatement of parole could be an attractive option for a special blue ribbon panel on correctional practices.

All of the appointments to the 17-member Commission to Improve the Sentencing, Supervision, Management and Incarceration of Prisoners have yet to be forwarded to Gov. John E. Baldacci, who included $250,000 in the budget for the panel’s expenses.

The commission is ordered to deliver its report to the Legislature no later than Jan. 2, 2004, after exploring every facet of the corrections process beginning with court sentencing and continuing through follow-up reports on released prisoners who have re-entered society.

“It’s a very broad charge,” said Denise Lord, associate commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections. “Pretty much soup to nuts.”

The intensive review is reviving old arguments in favor of parole, a practice abandoned by the state in 1976. Parole allowed inmates with reliable support sources to serve the balance of their sentences in the community providing their behavior behind bars was exemplary.

Lord said that, in 1976, there was a growing uneasiness about decisions made by the state’s parole board, which was appointed by the governor. In some instances, she said, decisions about who was being released were not based on a prisoner’s correctional history.

“Some thought the parole board was too liberal, and the corrections officials weren’t supporting some of the decisions being made,” she said.

As the state’s prison population swells to its current 2,000 inmates – who, on average, each cost the state $33,885 annually – the idea of freeing cell space by releasing even small numbers of deserving prisoners could become a viable option. At least, that’s what Jeffrey L. Libby hopes. A convicted murderer with more than 20 years left on his sentence, the Windham inmate recently wrote the Bangor Daily News explaining why parole is an idea whose time has returned.

“Reinstituting parole with the concept of punishing the bad and rewarding the good and those who are doing right would be an important step in [changing] Maine corrections,” Libby wrote.

Rep. Linda McKee, D-Wayne, recently toured the Windham facility and the center’s new 70-bed unit for women, which has exceeded its census capacity seven years ahead of schedule. There were four prisoners housed in a cell built for two, said McKee, who questioned whether current practices are compromising safety standards.

“We can’t just keep adding more and more prisoners,” she said. “I’m a proponent of prison reform, and parole is one of the things we need to look at. I think that when we got rid of parole, we threw the baby out with the bath water. Twenty states still have parole. If there were problems with the parole board, then they should have just done something about the parole board. That was the ’70s. That was then, this is now.”

Lord explained that while her department agreed some prisoners would not pose a threat to society if released before their sentences were completed, officials do not necessarily identify the reinstatement of parole as a first priority in corrections reform.

Rather than weighing early supervised release, Lord said the state should explore alternatives to incarceration. Should discussions proceed to actual legislative recommendations for parole, Lord said, the corrections department would want to be involved in determining prisoner eligibility.

“Obviously this issue will be revisited, and it will be interesting to see what kind of opposition and support it engenders,” she said. “The philosophical view is that there are prisoners who could do very well in the community. We’d really want to be sure that these decisions would be made in a thoughtful, objective way based on what works, good practice and research.”