Stan Moody

POB 240
Manchester, ME
207/626-0594
www.stanmoody.com

Botching the Budget of Maine Corrections

Stan Moody of Manchester, ME, former Maine State Representative and most recently a Chaplain at
Maine State Prison in Warren, is advocating for transparency and accountability in Maine’s prison
system…A prolific and published writer, Dr. Moody is pastor of the Meeting House Church in
Manchester and has been a speaker on human rights issues at conferences around the nation…

December 16, 2010

Trying to get your hands around the per-prisoner cost of corrections in Maine is like
trying to catch a greased pig. I made an attempt earlier last week and botched it big time,
discovering to my dismay that I had made yet another minor error in my re-write. I was reminded
that such is the hazard of working alone without oversight. My final figure came in at around
$50,000, down from my original erroneous $75,000.
I decided to take a look at how other more erudite and disciplined researchers have
addressed this budgetary miasma.
1. The mantra at the Department of Corrections has been $36,000 per year per prisoner.
2. Former House Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public
Safety, Rep. Anne Haskell, is armed with a report that pegs per-prisoner cost at the
State level at $43,363, about the same cost as a year of private college. Her retort is
aimed at a “flawed” Envision Maine report that she claims puts costs at $93,500 per
prisoner. Her total budget for the Maine Department of Corrections for FY10 and
FY11 is $296 million. She seeks to reconfigure “per client costs” to include
probationers and juveniles – at $12,180 per client, about the cost of a Toyota Yaris or
a timeshare week. Why not include all of us and get it down to the price of a dinner at
MacDonald’s?
3. Philip Trostel, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Maine
and author of the “Reinventing Maine Government” report for Envision Maine, roars
back with a figure of $61,258, or 41% higher than that of Rep. Haskell’s retort report.
4. On December 9, The Maine Heritage Policy Center issued a report that had the
Department of Corrections budget for FY10 and FY11 at $237 million, or 20% lower
than that by Rep. Haskell. What’s 20%, or $60 million, among friends?
5. While a member of the Maine Prison Industries Advisory Council, I was told
emphatically that the budget for county jails was equivalent to that of the budget for
state facilities, or around $150 million a year. Trostel pegs it 55% lower at $68
million.
6. In my correspondence with one of the members of the LePage budget team, I was told
that they all are scratching their heads over the Corrections budget, trying to make
sense of it.

1
 Taking the cue from a legislator who said just last evening that the people of Maine
would pay any price to feel safe, I retreat back to the broad brush approach to prison reform. Fact
1: The index crime rate in Maine has declined 40% over the past 25 years. Fact 2: While lowest
in the nation, incarceration in Maine has more than tripled over the same period. Fact 3: Three
segregated prisoners died under suspicious circumstances – two hastily cremated – from the year
beginning April 24, 2009, the date of the demise of prisoner Sheldon Weinstein in notorious
B117.
Do we feel safer now that we have locked up the druggies, the alcoholics, the 3-time
losers and pot-smoking probation violators at a cost of anywhere from $36,000 to $94,000 a
year, depending on who is doing the figuring?
Here we are building concentration camps for “social trash,” focused primarily on poor
people and people of color, while being treated as “social trash” unable to get on an airplane
without a metaphorical stripping or physical groping. Going into the Edmund S. Muskie federal
building in sleepy Augusta, Maine requires passing through a metal detector and giving your
name and itinerary to a uniformed guard in donut mode, even after passing the screening test. I
now simply send a check to the IRS without protest in fear of being held for terrorizing a federal
employee by questioning his need to know who I am or where I am going after passing through
his magnets.
This feeling-safe business has digressed to the point that even the most responsible
citizen can’t drive by a police cruiser without tensing at the wheel.
We slaughtered over a million Iraqi civilians in order to feel safe. Afghan civilians live in
terror of our bombs. Scores of other states are mulling over versions of Arizona’s racist
immigration law, heavily lobbied by the private prison industry. Fundamentalist Christians are
excited about an imminent Armageddon, just before which they will be caught up into the
heavens while everybody else will be annihilated.
It seems to me that Maine, being stuck up here out of the mainstream of the chaos of the
lower 48, could do a whole lot better than shell out unlimited money to people protecting us from
the doomsday scenario we are inviting by hiring them in the first place.