The Maine Department of Corrections recently released a comprehensive proposal to restructure the state’s county jail system. While the proposed plan [which can be found online at Digital Maine; or email me and I’ll send you a copy] has caused quite a stir in the corrections community, it did not come out of the blue. It was based on a request that those of us on the Criminal Justice & Public Safety Committee made last session to find efficiencies and cost savings within the county jail system. Despite some recent reports, this proposal is still very much alive.

Let’s start with a little background: as opposed to prisons, where people found guilty of greater offenses serve time, jails are for shorter sentences of less than nine months. Jails also house those on pre-trial detention from a recent arrest, as well as someone brought in for a probation violation. A jail could be holding everyone from a soccer mom who went 30 miles over the speed limit; someone who wrote a bad check; a person recently released from prison who violated probation by having beer in the house; to an accused murderer awaiting trial. Drug related cases are also very common, from simple possession to trafficking to near overdoses. Mental health issues that lead to a variety of community offenses are also common. Making a hospital analogy, our jails are somewhat like the emergency rooms of criminal justice. They have to take everyone who arrives, safely house them, until they stand trial or serve their sentence. A busy weekend of arrests could mean a surge in population, with many bailed out by Monday. The result is that the jail population is unpredictable. That makes management of jails arguably more challenging than prisons.

You can think of the County Jail as a central hub where all local, state and county law enforcement officers bring their prisoners for further processing. This is the beginning of the process and many things will happen after that. Some of these include arraignment, home monitoring, bail conditions, substance use disorder treatment, mental health assessment and treatment and possibly incarceration.

Jails are paid for primarily by property taxpayers. That’s done via a county assessment to municipalities. The balance, about 15 percent, is paid for by the state’s General Fund. Jail operations statewide cost about $80 million this year, or roughly $45,000 per inmate per year. Obviously, that’s a lot of money. Keeping people in jail is expensive. It means that we need to do all we can to prevent a revolving door, as well as be careful not to promote counterproductive “lock-em-up” criminal justice policy. But it also means, if you look back at costs over time, that our jails are remarkably efficient. In fact, in a time when the overall state budget has increased by more than a billion dollars, statewide jail costs have seen a less than ten million dollar increase since 2007.

So what’s to argue about? I think that the basic reason that we’re still disagreeing about the way jail funding works is that some of that funding comes from the counties and some of it comes from the state; yet the state also controls how much counties can charge municipalities. That sounds odd, so let me say it again – to pay for jails, counties make an assessment on the cities and towns within them, but the state dictates how much that assessment can be. It is an unusual situation. This spending cap puts our hardworking Sheriffs and County Commissioners in a bind, because as jail populations grow and program needs increase, there is no formula or appropriation that automatically provides funding, and no way to request more money. Instead, even as the opioid epidemic grows, resulting in higher rates of incarceration, we rely on a series of one-time budget appropriations at the state level to fill the gap. It is no way to run an operation.

The proposal is also controversial because it calls for jail closures. While York County Jail is not one of those proposed for closure, five others are. They are the ones in Androscoggin, Franklin, Oxford, Piscataquis and Washington counties. Instead, three regional multi-county jail authorities would be created: southern, mid-coastal and northern, with five jails in each region. Over time, savings would hypothetically be realized from the consolidation. But what happens if you close a county jail and an officer has to drive 40 miles or more one way to transport a prisoner to a jail? That could put public safety in jeopardy in that community.

We took major steps in the last legislative session to improve communication between the court system and our jails. For example: prior to our work, courts didn’t consistently know which inmate was held where. Even though jails and sheriffs reported that information, it didn’t always reach the judges. We took that problem on, and we’re now cutting down on the average number of days of expensive pre-trial detention for those waiting for a court date. Chief Justice Leigh Saufley even mentioned the new program in her State of the Judiciary address. Adding resources so that the state court system can operate at a faster pace would further help the situation. I think that by working together we can dig deeper and find more cost-saving and efficiency-improving opportunities like that.

Greater savings could also be achieved with better funding for employment, mental health and substance use programs in jails. It sounds counterintuitive, but since recidivism (also known as return-to-custody) is so common and so expensive, this is one of those spend-money-to-save-money areas. Kind of like better insulation or a new furnace at home, it’s an investment that pays off over time. More money invested in people while they are in jail will translate to less money needed over time for future incarcerations.

So, to sum up, do I think the new plan can work? In a word, no – at least not as written. I don’t think closing jails, any of them, makes sense. But I think the inspiration to try and find a better way to fund county jails is the right one. Could we add regional holding centers, to make prisoner processing faster for busy law enforcement officers? Could we add more state mental healthcare resources as part of Medicaid expansion?

The path forward is not entirely clear, but we do need to find additional funding to cover the ongoing operating costs of our jails without causing an increase in property taxes. The Governor and his team are not wrong that changes need to be made. I hope that by working together in a bipartisan fashion we can deliver the better solutions that the citizens of Maine deserve. As always, I welcome your thoughts and ideas.

Rep. Martin Grohman of Biddeford is an Independent State Representative serving his second term in the Maine Legislature and is a member of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. Outside the legislature, he hosts a podcast for Maine entrepreneurs called The Grow Maine Show and is chair of the Biddeford Solid Waste & Recycling Commission. Sign up for legislative updates at www.growmaine.com, facebook.com/repgrohman, email at martin.grohman@legislature.maine.gov or call Marty at home at 207-283-1476.