WINDHAM – State Sen. Gary Plummer, R-Cumberland, says he is in favor of a proposed policy change that would allow employees of the Maine Correctional Center in Windham to kill inmates who attempt to escape from the jail.

“It seems to me that if you’ve got a dangerous prisoner – which we do have at the correctional center – escaping, then it would be better to stop them before they escape rather than wait until after they’ve committed other crimes and potentially taken other hostages and then have the police come in and take them out,” Plummer said. “If they’re climbing the fence you can yell, ‘Stop.’ But if they don’t stop, how do you stop them?”

The policy provision is one component of a Department of Corrections bill that Plummer has co-sponsored in the Legislature this winter.

Officers and supervisors at the Maine State Prison in Warren are allowed to kill prisoners when they believe “it is necessary to prevent an escape from custody.” According to the law, the prison officials must first “make reasonable efforts to advise the person that if the attempt to escape does not stop immediately, deadly force will be used.” The amendment to the law would allow the use of deadly force at the Maine Correctional Center, as well.

The amendment to the deadly force provision has drawn fire from Senate Democrats, according to press reports. District 111 Rep. Jane Pringle, D-Windham, could not be reached for comment.

Scott Landry, the superintendent of the correctional center, said that the department requested a new policy because of the changing inmate population at the Windham prison. In the past decade, Landry said, the prison population has changed from mostly low-level offenders to mid-level and high-level offenders, including many inmates charged with murder. At this point, he said, the prison off River Road in South Windham now holds nearly as many offenders that the department considers to be dangerous as the Warren prison.

“What inspires the idea is really when we look at the populations between the Maine State Prison and the Maine Correctional Center, the populations resemble each other closely enough that it’s really hard to justify inconsistencies in the policies in responding to escapes between them,” Landry said.

Plummer said that he was not aware of any successful escapes from the correctional center in the past decade, and Landry said that escape attempts at the jail are rare.

According to Landry, the vast majority of the more than 650 inmates at the correctional center have been either charged or convicted of felonies.

When asked if non-felons should be killed for attempting to escape the jail, Plummer said that attempting to escape from prison is a felony.

“We could have somebody in there who committed a crime that maybe is not considered dangerous – somebody who has committed an embezzlement crime – but once they attempt to escape, that’s a very serious crime,” Plummer said.

The main point of the policy, Plummer said, is not to kill inmates, but to deter jailbreaks.

“I think the Department of Corrections sees it as a totally different level of deterrent and particularly for people who are in there for very long periods of time,” Plummer said. “What difference does it make if it’s 30 years or 37 years, you know?”

According to Landry, “shoot-to-kill is not necessarily the first step.”

“This is really designed to prevent people from escaping,” he said. “It’s kind of a last resort option.”