Prison guards at jeopardy as overcrowding worsens

loading...

CUSHING – Public sympathy generally doesn’t run deep for prison inmates, Maine State Prison Warden Jeff Merrill indicated Tuesday during a tour of the facility he manages.

So when Merrill and Maine Department of Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson seek help from the Legislature with a growing problem of overcrowding within the state’s correctional facilities, they know it’s going to be a hard sell.

While few may care about prisoners having to sleep on floors, Merrill and Magnusson say those conditions are putting corrections officers at risk. The way prisoners are distributed throughout the correctional system also has meant those officers routinely work double shifts, causing family problems and sleep deprivation, which Merrill says can affect their job performance.

Overcrowding is most visible at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, where the rated capacity of 522 prisoners is overrun with a population of 689, Merrill and Magnusson said.

“They’ve got them sleeping on the floor,” Merrill said.

Crowding there has meant that shorter-term, often younger prisoners have been moved to the Maine State Prison in Cushing.

“They don’t get along,” Merrill said of mixing up the Cushing facility’s population. The younger prisoners often cause conflict, and the older men want an area to themselves.

Just a mile or so from the Maine State Prison, the Bolduc Correctional Facility in Warren, which houses low-risk inmates and is rated to hold 150, is overloaded with 214 prisoners.

Downeast Correctional Facility in Bucks Harbor, approved for 96 inmates, houses 151. Charleston Correctional Facility houses 96, but is rated for 75.

The Department of Corrections projects a 200-bed shortfall within a year or two, Merrill said.

A plan the department recently proposed calls for:

. Opening a second housing area in Charleston for 55 low-risk inmates.

. Transferring 50 minimum-security prisoners to county jails.

. Moving 125 prisoners to out-of-state prisons.

. Contracting with a private company to house 70 minimum-security female prisoners.

. Expanding community confinement sentencing.

“Each one of these has a cost to it,” Merrill said, and all are seen as short-term fixes. Even so, there is no money budgeted for any of them.

Maine State Prison, which houses felons facing long-term incarceration as well as those deemed high-risk for their behavior behind bars, opened a little more than five years ago. Compared with the old prison at Thomaston, it looks modern, spacious and high-tech. The sprawling 50-acre campus was designed to incarcerate 900 prisoners, more than twice the 440-prisoner capacity of the old prison, but it filled up quickly.

“Shortly after we opened, the courts just started flooding us [with inmates],” Merrill said. “We never had enough staff to staff this place from Day One.”

The public has demanded stiffer sentencing, and the Legislature has complied. Sentencing rules now require anyone sentenced to nine months and a day or more be committed to the state correctional system, rather than the county jails, he said.

The new Maine State Prison complex is organized into housing pods in which two-inmate cells ring a large day room. The prison houses high-risk prisoners in one area, medium-risk prisoners in other pods. It also has an infirmary, a protected custody area and a mental health ward.

Merrill explained that even though the facility isn’t at capacity, some pods are full, and high-risk prisoners can’t be moved into medium-risk areas.

“You’ve got to separate these people,” he said.

Prisoners fare better if they are kept busy, Merrill said. Not only are they less likely to cause conflict, but in his 27 years of working in the system, the warden has seen inmates make their prison stay “a one-stop deal” if they can work or take classes.

“Idleness is not a good thing. When you’re at full capacity, it limits your ability to [offer] programs,” he said. “It’s not just beds; it’s keeping them busy.”

Currently, 180 prisoners work at paying jobs. More would like to work, Merrill said.

But more than anything, Merrill worries about the 438 staff members who work at MSP and the Bolduc facility. Corrections officers often are asked at the end of 10-hour shifts to work another eight hours.

“Two Sundays ago, we had 29 staff vacancies on one shift,” Merrill said.

The prison has added more “posts,” the warden said, as the inmate population has risen, which means officers must be available to staff those places in the facility at certain times. Even so, the warden said guards often are alone with 50 inmates in a medium-security pod.

“I am very concerned about the staff and the impact it’s having on their personal lives,” he said. The divorce rate is high among guards. During a tour, three guards indicated that job demands played a part in the dissolution of their marriages.

“If we burn these people out, I don’t have a long list of people wanting to come to work here,” Merrill said.

Ira Scherr, a corrections officer who is also president of the union representing guards, on Tuesday said he had worked an additional four hours Friday, eight hours Saturday, and four hours Monday, all after regular 10-hour shifts. In the last week, he worked more than 30 hours of overtime.

“That is fairly typical,” Scherr said.

“We’re understaffed. We’re operating in an emergency mode,” he said. “It becomes a public safety issue. The officers are working in a sleep-deprived state.”

Earlier in the week, Scherr had learned that another officer had to pull to the side of the road to get a couple hours’ sleep, fearing he would nod off on the drive home.

Dozens of officers have had to seek medical attention for anxiety, Scherr said.

Another officer said he’d worked the previous Saturday and Sunday, though he had not been scheduled to do so.

Sgt. Joel Parsons, a supervisor, agreed with Merrill’s concern about staff members.

“When you’re working your staff 50-60 hours a week, you’re asking for trouble,” he said.

Magnusson concurred, saying, “The staff are absolutely wearing out. And some good staff are looking to leave.”

The high overtime costs are stretching the budget, but still are less expensive than adding positions, he said.

Recruitment and retention of officers also have been challenges, Merrill and Magnusson said.

Though both Magnusson and Merrill are not warning of an imminent emergency, both are concerned.

“When we have [inmates] sleeping on floors, staff are at risk,” Magnusson said.