A story by anonymous from 2024
I studied criminal justice with the intent of becoming a police officer. While I was in college, too young to work as a police officer, I applied for a job at the county jail. The guys in county were either not yet sentenced and still awaiting trial or inmates serving nine months or less.
The biggest thing I noticed working in corrections was a lack of mental health treatment. Almost all the inmates were on medication and diagnosed with some sort of mental health disorder, be it anxiety, depression or whatever. We only had one person who came in weekly to check in with the mental health patients. They were only able to see 3 or 4 inmates a day and they couldn’t see everyone–there were too many people in need of services for that one person to see weekly. Oftentimes the mental health worker coming in wasn’t a qualified, licensed psychologist or licensed clinical psychological counselor. This bare minimum psychological care they were receiving wasn’t even from a person who would be considered qualified to handle these cases on the outside.
Since county is where people come when they’re first arrested, they would come to us in varying states, often suicidal. Calling crisis intervention was useless. If we had someone come in with suicidal ideations that we were concerned about, crisis wouldn't touch them if they had any alcohol in them at all. They wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t see the person. This led to many negative incidences that could have been prevented.
In county jail, inmates don’t have as many privileges as in a state prison. They’re locked in their cell block and just sit there all day long. The common area of each cell block is fifteen feet by fifteen feet with no windows. They had rec five times a week, if it wasn’t canceled. There was some programing, when it wasn’t canceled. The inmates got maybe two hours out of their cell each day for rec and programming.
In order to enforce rules in county we’d use segregation, take away good time or take away privileges. And we knew just because a charge was bad, it didn’t mean the person was bad. They’re human beings and a charge didn’t always line up with the likability of the person. If the inmate was respectful and acted decent, we’d feel a lot worse about taking privileges away than if it was someone who was going out of their way to piss off the COs. We’d get to know these guys as individuals and how they were inside determined how we handled discipline. Sometimes you’d know a good guy was
just having a bad day and it was tough taking away privileges knowing they had so little.
Years later I worked at the reentry center in Bangor. They rushed putting that program together and lacked the resources they needed for it to be successful. The idea was to provide a residence for guys getting out of prison who still had to serve probation, or have been on probation in the community and lost their housing for some reason. Being homeless is a probation violation. So, someone could end up in prison if they found themselves unhoused suddenly, even if prison was not part of their original sentence. The facility needed a case worker full time. Instead they only had a case worker on site for a couple hours during the week while most of the guys were off site working. The inmates would be at the facility for six months with no plan on how to reintegrate into society upon leaving. Without a case manager, COs would be trying to hook guys up with Department of Health and Human Services to help them find housing so they wouldn’t be violating probation once they left the reentry center. Unfortunately, many people aren’t given that option. The reentry center became a catch-all for people caught in the system without housing. It served as a halfway house for people getting out of prison, people on probation and it was the only facility that provided that service in the state, no matter which county the person came from. Some were being released from Charleston, Maine Correctional Center, Maine State Prison, and we had guys on probation from every county.
We had guys that should have been kicked out and guys that stayed longer than they should have. It was difficult for the men trying to stay sober and really turn their lives around when there were others who were bringing drugs into the facility and getting high in the bathroom or hiding alcohol around the property.
Once you work in corrections you start to see the darker side of humanity and society. You’re just constantly subjected to toxicity and trauma.
We need more mental health inside the facilities and on the outside. What’s the point of throwing them meds to keep them stable while they’re inside just for them to get released without support, lose access to their meds and start behaving badly again? That’s why so many of these people end up back in prison after release. The majority of what I’ve seen are people who have had traumatic things happen in their life and are coping through substances. They need education, programming, mental health and rehab services. Most of the guys incarcerated are going to get out someday and they’re going to be your neighbors. And nobody wants to fund corrections. When it comes to budget cuts, corrective programming in the prisons are the first to get cut. People need to ask themselves, what do we want? Do we want people who have been further traumatized and haven’t received any rehabilitative services to come out and engage in the same criminal activity? Or do we want somebody who’s rehabilitated and reformed coming to live next door to us?
Because of my time working in the carceral system I have become very aware of the lack of mental health and social support services available to people in Maine.
