Advocates for homeless, incarcerated and mentally ill people are urging members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee to reject proposed biennial budgets for the Maine Department of Corrections and Public Safety that total nearly $700 million combined.
At a hearing Monday afternoon, several dozen people testified that they’d like to see the money aggressively reinvested in criminal justice alternatives that help people, such as housing, mental health and substance use disorder treatment and restorative justice programs for youth.
Jan Collins of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition points out that there is currently an excess of jail beds in Maine and not enough beds to treat people with mental illness or substance use disorder.
“We have sheriffs and county commissioners vehemently stating that county jails are the largest mental health facilities in their counties, with no resources to treat their mental health conditions, and still we do not adequately fund mental health services,” she says.
Advocates say by continuing to invest in law enforcement and corrections in the same way, communities are not safer and the state is failing some of its most vulnerable residents.
Rep. Laurie Osher, a Democrat from Orono, says she’s disappointed that the Mills administration is proposing to fund programs that have continuously failed.
“Gov. Mills’ budget has taxpayers continuing to fund the drug war against our citizens. The proposed two-year budget includes over $13.6 milllion to the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. Ten years ago the proposed two-year MDEA budget amounted to $6.3 million,” she says. “This is a huge increase and we would think that a huge increase means that we invest more money because we know that’s where the money should be spent. But, in fact, the huge increase didn’t keep our drug overdose deaths from continuing to rise.”
In addition, Osher says, the failed drug war disproportionately targets people of color, who make up less than 2% of Maine’s overall population but account for 12% of the adult prison population and 23% of juvenile prison population.
