Our View: Jail is the wrong way to make offenders pay fines
It’s not only unfair to incarcerate those who can’t pay, it’s a bad way to use public funds.
Too many people incarcerated in ‘debtors prison,’ de facto mental health wards
Now that lawmakers and Gov. Paul LePage have found a short-term fix to the county jails funding problems, they can turn their attention to the underlying cause. Maine, like other states, has jails that are over capacity, not because crime is on the rise, but because too many people are incarcerated for too long.
Solitary confinement: inside America's dreaded isolation cells
Depicted in 'Orange is the New Black' and fiercely debated in Congress, America's widespread and controversial use of solitary confinement is under fire. The Telegraph visits an isolation cell in Maine State Prison to find out more.
When commencement is a second chance for 13 Maine State Prison inmates
The following is adapted from a commencement address delivered to 13 University of Maine at Augusta graduates who earned bachelor’s and associate’s degrees while incarcerated at the Maine State Prison in Warren. The commencement ceremony took place Nov. 4, 2013. The inmates’ education costs were paid for by the Sunshine Lady Foundation, run by Doris Buffett.
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.