BELFAST – Waldo County Sheriff Scott Story has been appointed president of the Maine Sheriffs’ Association.

Story was elevated to the position last week during the association’s annual meeting in Portland.

He succeeds Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion, who resigned at midterm because of other professional obligations.

The association is a nonprofit designed to raise the level of professionalism in the criminal justice field and to facilitate communication between Maine’s sheriffs’ departments and the public.

“The sheriffs do a lot of work in this state, not just operating the jails,” Story said. “We do a large amount of criminal work and a large amount of traffic enforcement. There is an awful lot that the public is not aware of.”

Story said the state’s sheriff departments provide school resource officers in some counties, operate the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program and work with groups that help provide services to seniors.

Story said his position will require him to get involved in legislative matters at the State House. He said he expected that legislation dealing with corrections and criminal sentencing would be major topics of discussion during this session.

Story, who will be up for re-election as sheriff next year, said, “The state and the counties are both in the same boat on corrections. There was a time when jail populations would shift back and forth, but now we’re all full.”

He expects the Legislature to receive recommendations by a commission examining sentencings, “and I think it’s going to be important for the Maine sheriffs to be involved in that.”

Story said sheriffs and the Department of Corrections are in the middle of a three-year program managed by the National Institute of Corrections and the University of Colorado aimed at implementing effective correctional management of offenders.

The study examines successful practices designed to reduce recidivism among offenders.

“I’m excited about it because I think it’s really a direction we need to head in,” Story said. “Just locking people up is not changing our crime rate and it’s costing us a lot of money.”

While the counties “will always have people that we will have to keep incarcerated for the protection of others,” alternative methods of sentencing need to be considered, he said.