Our View: Prison reforms take Maine in right direction

It’s called “the prison within a prison,” and anyone who watches a recently aired “Frontline” documentary filmed in the Maine State Prison’s solitary confinement unit can see why. The setting depicted in “Solitary Nation” is grim. Responding to prolonged isolation – 23 hours a day in their cells, with an hour a day outside in individual exercise pens – inmates yell, slash their wrists, flood their cells, push feces under the cell doors and slam their fists into walls.