Hancock County debtors’ prison

One hundred and fifty years ago, in those unenlightened times of Victorian England and the Second French Empire, when people were incarcerated for debt and for stealing bread, England and France were blessed by the writers Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo who through their novels roused their respective people to the horrors of these injustices.

In our times we have translated their stories of horrendous injustice into popular musicals, “Oliver” and “Les Miserables.” So it isn’t as if we are not aware of how unspeakable it is to put people in prison for debt or for the petty crimes that result from poverty.

Yet the Hancock County commissioners have started charging prisoners for room and board, possibly at the rate of $25 a day. For the most part, the people incarcerated in Hancock County Jail are there because they are poor. Their crimes at times are offenses like driving a child to an emergency room when they had no license or when their car had not passed inspection. Some are in jail for days before even seeing an attorney.

Many are young people with chemical addiction illness. Many of them are repeatedly incarcerated for parole violation when what they need is rehabilitation. Funding for rehabilitation, however, is so meager that few are able to enter programs.

Many suffer from mental illness. Today, the prevalent institution in the United States for people suffering from mental illness is prison and jail rather than hospital.

Many prisoners when they are released have no home to go to for that was lost while they were imprisoned. They have no money and poor prospects for finding a job. They have no access to health care or dental care. The rate of recidivism is high.

If the Hancock County commissioners have their way, they will also leave heavily in debt. A debt they have accumulated at the rate of $25 a day.

The law (17A Section 1341.) that allows prisoners to be assessed for room and board was passed in 1985, also a time of fiscal hardship. The law reads: “the sentencing court shall consider and may assess as part of the sentence a reimbursement fee to help defray the expenses of the offender’s room and board.” (emphasis added)

In determining whether to make the assessment, the law says the court “shall consider evidence relevant to the offender’s ability to pay.”

The assessment is at the judge’s discretion and until now was seldom if ever made. To claim, as the Hancock County treasurer has done, that she is only enforcing a law long on the books, is simply not so. Both in Hancock and Penobscot counties, judges have only recently been asked to impose this assessment as a way for jails to meet budgets. Since judges are appointed officials, there is perhaps a perception that their reappointment could be in jeopardy were they not to comply.

If inmates on release do not pay their debt for lodging a warrant may ensue. Other jail administrators, including Jim Foss, president of the Jail Administrators Association, feel this new imposition is bad management as the cost of collecting the debt is apt to exceed the amount due. This would be especially true for indigent prisoners who could find themselves returning to jail repeatedly for not paying an ever-mounting burden of debt for their incarceration.

For several years now, jail has become our nation’s substitute for treatment in a mental hospital. Jail is the preferred institution for dealing with the illness of chemical dependency. In Hancock County, jail has now become a debtors’ prison.

The poor of Hancock County have always had a euphemism for going to jail. When a father a brother, a mother or child goes to jail, they say she or he went to college.

For a full-time student at, say, Fort Kent or Machias, the cost per day for full tuition and room and board is $28.50. For a mere $3.50 more a day, the jail population at present facing a complete dead end on release, could be housed, fed and educated.

Such enlightenment will probably not ensue. But perhaps there is a modern-day Dickens or Hugo out there. Perhaps our great-grandchildren will enjoy a musical named “Hancock.” Perhaps our great-grandchildren will laugh at the absurdity of this great injustice and cry from pity over wasted lives. But for now, the people who suffer will find no enjoyment in the situation and apparently no pity.

At least no pity from the Hancock County commissioners.

Karen Saum of Bucksport has been a volunteer at Maine jails.