Although many such reforms could eventually result from the current discussions in Augusta, militating against reform is the Criminal Justice Committee’s eagerness to please the Corrections Department in designing the new set-up. This attitude was in evidence on February 4 at the committee’s first work session on the proposal. At that meeting, Peter Lehman, to his dismay, was the only representative of the new activist coalition.
Maine’s and America’s penal system has run for decades on the high octane of harsh retribution, resulting in millions of human beings now behind bars and a national incarceration rate five times what it was 30 years ago — the highest in the world. But it’s possible Maine politicians are beginning to gain an understanding of what the Zen Buddhist at the Belfast meeting would call karma: Vengeance has a big price tag, and compassion can be cost-effective.
Lance Tapley can be reached at ltapley@roadrunner.com.
Related:
Three years and counting, Time for a clean sweep?, Prisoners as commodities, More 
- Three years and counting
For the past three years, Portland Phoenix contributing writer Lance Tapley has been the only reporter in Maine to pay attention to the appalling conditions suffered by inmates in the Maine State Prison
- Time for a clean sweep?
In early 2007, Rhonda Dawson, a thoughtful, candid, 45-year-old African-American guard at the Maine State Prison in Warren, quit her job after four years because, she says, of racist taunting from her fellow correctional officers.
- Prisoners as commodities
If Baldacci goes around the Legislature with an emergency order, a big division could open between the governor and the Legislature.
- Baldacci rejects reform, embraces corporate prisons again
Awareness is dawning around the country that 30 years of lengthy, tough-on-crime prison sentences have constructed an unsustainably expensive penal system.
- Prison ‘troublemaker’ confronts racism, medical abuse
Vacillating between grit and despair — between aggressive lawsuits and suicide attempts — Deane Brown, the prisoner who in 2005 blew the whistle on the torture of mentally ill inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement “Supermax” unit, is struggling against prison conditions in Maryland, where he was exiled by the Baldacci administration.
- Prison in turmoil
Will reform have to wait for a new governor?
- Prisoners’ support services slashed
Governor John Baldacci announced on December 16 that he had taken significant steps toward warehousing prisoners instead of rehabilitating them.
- Lockdown
If you were a reporter and you received a letter like the one excerpted below, what would you make of it? Lance Tapley discusses reporting the prisons
- Falling down
Critics of the state Department of Corrections say the hostage-taking last June at the Maine State Prison dramatically illustrates that the concrete, high-tech lockup in Warren is showing cracks from stress on the prison guards.
- Lawmakers to probe prison
For years controversy has churned over the Maine State Prison's treatment of both inmates and correctional officers. For the first time, legislators have taken action.
- Less than equal
This story has a bias. It’s in favor of human rights for all people.
- Less
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