The Bangor Daily News is to be commended for the story examining the corrections systems in Vermont and Maine (Oct. 27-28). This is exactly the type of thoughtful analysis that is missing from the Baldacci administration’s half-baked jail consolidation proposal.

Isn’t it ironic that the BDN can display enough initiative to send a reporter next door to Vermont, yet Maine’s Department of Corrections is only now at the point of “strongly considering” doing the same? An objective review of Vermont’s consolidated system might raise a red flag for our DOC, given that their per inmate cost is actually higher than Maine’s, even though Vermont boards 500 prisoners out of state in an effort to save money.

Further analysis of all six states with unified corrections systems could provide additional lessons for state government, and it wouldn’t require out-of-state travel. Our bureaucrats need only the ability to read a U.S. map. Five of the six states with unified corrections systems are Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii and Vermont; they rank first, second, third, fourth and eighth on the list of the smallest states in the nation.

All five can easily fit inside Maine with enough room left over to accommodate New Jersey. Alaska, the sixth state with unified corrections, is the largest state in the U.S. It is also largely uninhabited, ranking 49th in population, and nearly half of its residents live in metropolitan Anchorage.

One might deduce from this quick geography lesson that the sum total of large, rural, populated American states with unified corrections systems is zero. Yet Maine’s governor, in a state where 60 percent of the population lives in rural areas, purports to gain much of his corrections savings by closing functional jails in four, rural counties: Piscataquis, Waldo, Franklin and Oxford. The very last thing we need now is for Augusta to go about eroding basic institutions and services in rural Maine.

Tom Lizotte

Piscataquis County Commissioner

Dover-Foxcroft