BANGOR, Maine — In recent weeks, Maine's struggling county jails began receiving just over $12 million in financial relief from the state.
But sheriffs say the payout falls short of what they need to cope with rising operational costs and the extra expenses associated with overcrowding, which has become especially bad at the Penobscot County Jail.
"So today, we're at 197," says Penobscot County Sheriff Troy Morton. "The in-house capacity is supposed to be 157."
The overcrowding is so bad that Morton has inmates sleeping on cots all over the jailhouse.
"What used to be classrooms or programming rooms had to be turned into housing," he says. "We've had to add cots to different areas."
The jail actually had a hundred more inmates than it can handle recently. Morton says the sheriff's department is paying to board an additional 60 at jails in nearby counties with more space.
Inside the Penobscot facility, Morton says the environment is tense.
"It does increase the amount of altercations we've had," he says. "We've had two assaults this past week that were inmate on inmate."
Morton wouldn't give MPBN a tour or allow photos of the jail or the control room due to the chaos.
Ask Morton how to ease some of the tension and he's quick to bring up money. Over the summer, a law was passed giving the Maine Department of Corrections responsibility for sending the jails just over $12 million — about 15 percent of their overall yearly budget.
"This has been the first time, in many years, that we have actually received our funding from the state," he says. "We actually have the money and know how much they're going to pay us, not a guess."
The problem is that the Penobscot County Jail is still more than $400,000 in the hole from last year. Morton says sheriffs are likely to ask the Legislature for more money next year.
But when asked what can be done in the near term to ease the overcrowding, Morton mentions a survey of the jail's inmates taken last weekend by his deputies.
"Which drilled down into our pretrial population," he says. "Sixty-seven percent of those incarcerated in our facility were pretrial. Of that 67 percent, 47 percent had no bail at all. We're greatly impacted by the courts."
Every month, Morton and his deputies provide the Penobscot County Superior Court with a list of inmates and how long each has been locked up.
Over at the courthouse, there are different views on what's causing overcrowding at the jail and what should be done to ease it.
Jeffrey Silverstein, a longtime defense attorney, says more and more nonviolent offenders are being subjected to bail conditions that can't be met.
"Some of this is caused by repeat criminality, due to addiction, where the people aren't necessarily getting arrested for heavy drug involvement," he says. "But they're getting arrested for heavy crime, stuff to support habits."
Silverstein gives the hypothetical example of someone with a drug addiction. They get high, steal from, or get into an altercation with a neighbor, and are charged with petty theft or maybe criminal trespassing.
"You know, they're subject to bail conditions," he says. "No use or possession. Subject to random search and testing. So officers just show up at will. And if they find that the person has beer in the fridge or had been drinking a beer, that's cause for arrest."
Silverstein says these kinds of offenders shouldn't be clogging up the county jails.
The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits courts from setting unreasonably high bails. But Maine's bail code states the public needs to be protected from potential criminality, and Chris Almy, Penobscot County district attorney, says that's a sound standard that needs to continue.
"I don't think it's appropriate to just say, 'Well, the jails are crowded. Therefore, we're going to let people out who are accused or robbery or some serious offenses. Just let them out because the jails are crowded!'" he says.
Almy says the court needs to do a better job identifying defendants who are languishing in jail either pending trial or sentencing.
"The judges need to sit down with the prosecutors and identify those prisoners, in jail, that should have their cases set for trail or set for sentencing and get them done," he says.
But too often, says Almy, judges and prosecutors get buried under the day-to-day workload and don't do the kind of advance planning that could move cases along more quickly, so many defendants sit in Penobscot County Jail for months, even though they're ready to be tried or sentenced and moved to a state correctional facility.