BANGOR – Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross believes the newly created Board of Visitors at the jail will help the broader community understand the problems the facility is grappling with and give administrators some fresh ideas about how the facility could run more effectively.

“We tend to view things as police officers and don’t always see possible solutions from other angles,” Ross said last week. “The board’s input will help make the jail a better place.”

Members of the volunteer board include people from business, health care, corrections and ministry. Once they have completed their initial orientation, the six members will be able to access the facility any time without prior permission from Ross or jail administrators.

Penobscot County is the first jail in the northern half of the state to have a visitors’ board, Ross said last week. Three members are very familiar with the corrections field and three are relatively new to the subject.

It will be similar to the five-member Maine State Prison Board of Visitors created by the Legislature, the sheriff said. It is an oversight and advisory committee of citizens appointed by the governor to represent the interests of the people of Maine in prison matters.

Ross also hopes that by being able to see the jail as he and other employees see it, board members will help build support for a new or expanded facility over the next few years should the Penobscot County commissioners decide it’s needed. A separate committee is considering ways to ease overcrowding at the jail and whether new construction will be necessary.

The jail was built in 1986 to house about 125 inmates. Nearly a year ago, it was given a two-year variance by the Maine Department of Corrections to increase capacity by about 60 inmates. Since the first of the year, the jail has had to board out up to 30 prisoners each day to other facilities around the state because the Penobscot County Jail was over capacity. The cost to the county is about $100 per prisoner per day in boarding fees.

“I was interested in the importance [Ross] is placing on transparency at the jail,” Michael Crowley of Eastern Maine Healthcare and a former Bangor city councilor, said about why he agreed to serve on the committee. “The purpose is to ensure that everything is as it should be at the jail and an opportunity to understand how it works. I have been struck by the fact that I know so little about this facility that is used by every municipality in the county.”

Crowley also said that he wants to look at the issues the jail is facing honestly and confront them in proactive ways so the facility can better serve all citizens in the county from the inmates to the employees to the taxpayers.

Other members of the committee are: the Rev. Bob Carlson, the chaplain at the jail; Candy Guerette, executive director of the Greater Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Trip Gardner, a psychiatrist with Penobscot Community Health Center in Bangor; Judy Bailey of the Maine Department of Corrections; and Dexter Wilson, chairman of the Penobscot County Jail Expansion Advisory Committee.