After, six meetings and extensive research, a legislative commission voted unanimously Dec. 6, to recommend a reconstruction of the Unified County Corrections System and giving the Board of Corrections more authority.
The Board of Corrections and the Unified County Corrections System were created by the Legislature in 2008 in response to growing demands for inmate beds, and to lower the cost of corrections in the state of Maine.
Recognizing the system was not working very well, the 126th Legislature created a commission to study the system and report back to them in the second session.
According to the draft copy of the recommendations, “With the serious problems of the current system, it is reasonable to question whether it can achieve its goals with only a few pivotal statutory changes. Reforming the authority of the BOC is absolutely essential to making the organization useful for achieving standardization in the system”.
The commissions recommendations include changing the composition of the nine member board. The commission recommends four members of the public be put on the board along with one county commissioner, one sheriff, one county manager/administrator, and the Maine Commissioner of Corrections or his designee.
Currently the BOC membership consist of four representatives of various counties, two administrators, one municipal officer and two members of the public.
The commission recommends the BOC be given the power to withhold payments due to counties who refuse to accept assigned inmates or fail to to comply with accounting and budgeting protocols; to curtail spending when directed to do so; and otherwise fail to operate in accordance with standards set by the BOC or the Department of Corrections.
The commission considered three other options, during the past few months, to improve Maine’s corrections system. They included the creation of four regional jail authorities modeled like the Two Bridges Regional Jail Authority with multiple counties cooperating to achieve regional efficiencies.
A Department of Corrections takeover of the county jail system was considered but was not recommended because a single statewide system would be unable to adjust to local pay scale, and could create more costs. It would also overturn 350 years of political culture and tradition in Maine, requiring a redefinition of the roles of county officials and employees, and perhaps the county government system itself, according to the Commission’s recommendations.
The commission also considered returning to the pre-2008 system of individual county responsibility. This option is not recommended because the commission asserted it would be impossible to break the freeze on local property tax increases for corrections that was established with the unified system established in 2008.
