Maine Voices; Maine, too, is guilty of overusing prisons as punishment

As people across the nation tuned in to the speech by Attorney General Eric Holder last week, it may have been easy for Mainers to tune out. After all, Mr. Holder’s topic was the bloated federal prison system, but here in Maine we have the lowest incarceration rate in the country. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much. America has more people in prison per capita than anywhere else in the world. And even in Maine, we incarcerate people at a higher rate than most European countries.