AUGUSTA, Maine — Medical care for inmates in the state’s correctional system is expensive and the state foots the bill, although a 1997 ruling by the federal government would allow some inmates that are hospitalized to get the mostly federally funded Medicaid program.

“To the best of my knowledge, it has never been done here in Maine,” said Corrections Commissioner Joe Ponte. “I don’t know why it has not been used even though it has been available to a limited number of inmates.” Report by Bangor Daily News.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services informed states in 1997 that inmates that leave prison facilities and are admitted to a hospital for more than 24 hours and meet the poverty and other state rules of Medicaid are eligible for coverage. The federal government pays for roughly two-thirds of Medicaid, with the state paying the rest.

“We don’t have that many cases where this would apply, but there are some,” Ponte said. “We also are limited in that the inmate has to agree to apply for the Medicaid and they certainly won’t always do that.”

He said the department is actively working to shift medical costs from the state where possible. He said a program in juvenile corrections requires parents of children in the two state facilities to continue to cover their child on their private health insurance while the child is in state custody.

“We are exploring if there are any situations in the adult side where inmates have private insurance and whether there is any thing we can do there,” he said.

Ponte said he is doing whatever he can to cut costs through policy changes. He said there are many examples of medical procedures covered in the past that no longer will be approved. He said a recent example was the case of an inmate in his 60s who wanted rotator cuff surgery even though his arm still had good movement. It was denied because it did not meet the “medically necessary” standard used by insurers.

“We have also lowered drug costs just by comparing to the national average,” Ponte said. For example, he said the state has been paying $35 for a psychotropic prescription when the national average cost of the drug was $8.

Ponte said his efforts are aimed at reducing state health costs for inmates until 2014, when the federal health care reform act will cover all inmates with incomes less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

“That’s 95 if not 99 percent of the inmates,” he said. “That will be a significant savings because it will cover all health care costs under Medicaid, not just the hospital part.”

Sen. Richard Rosen, R-Bucksport, is the co-chairman of the Appropriations Committee and has served several years on the panel while in the House and Senate. He was surprised that the federal government had allowed even limited Medicaid coverage for inmates and that the state had not explored that option years ago.

“It’s a question that those of us on the committee have repeatedly asked over the years, whether or not inmates are eligible and can receive services through the program. If there is an opportunity there, we should explore it,” he said.

Rosen said the fact that some level of coverage has been available since 1997 and that the state has not taken advantage of it is both surprising and troubling. Rep. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, the Democratic lead on the panel and a former co-chair of the committee, agreed.

“We certainly should be looking at this again,” she said. “This is something that some of us have been talking about for a long time.”

Rotundo said the Department of Corrections should also look at other ways to leverage federal funds to help pay for corrections costs. She said with a growing number of inmates reaching old age, there should be consideration of a nursing home-type facility to house elderly inmates.

“We are already looking at that,” Ponte said. “We are looking at doing a lot of things differently.”

Rosen said the issue is sure to come up as lawmakers consider a supplemental state budget in the January session of the Legislature.

Tammy Inmate Health, Maine, Prison Health Care

Maine DOC has proposed cutting the inmate population at the Bolduc Correctional Facility in Warren in half and cutting about 20 jobs, according to Unit Manager Ray Felt.

Felt said the proposed cuts threaten the very mission of the minimum security facility, which is to rehabilitate and train prisoners before transitioning them back into life outside the prison. He said he and the other employees at the Bolduc Correctional Facility are passionate about this mission.  “We want to try to change behavior so they won’t come back,” he said of the prisoners. “A lot of these guys are going to be your neighbors” …

The Bolduc Correctional Facility provides prisoners with opportunities to work, learn job skills, take classes, and deal with emotional and substance abuse problems. The prison farm is minimum security and many of the prisoners are involved in work release programs. Prisoners work jobs and perform a great deal of community and public service. If the proposed state cuts are made, the prison farm will not be able to provide prison workers for community service programs …

Right now, the facility has about 63 employees and 180 prisoners. It has the capacity to handle up to 224 prisoners. If the cuts are implemented as planned, only about 90 prisoners will be left there.  The state has proposed cutting 10 support staff positions and 10 security officer positions.   The prison farm employs 27 corrections officers, six sergeants and one captain to provide security and keep it in operation 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

Felt said that if the cuts are made, some of the prisoners will be sent to county jails and the Maine State Prison, which he said will start double-bunking prisoners, putting more prisoners in each cell …

“When you think of prisons, everyone thinks about the negative,” Felt said. “We do a lot that’s positive.”

The article in the Warren Village Soup is full of good detail.

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As reported by WCSH6-TV :

Proposed budget cuts and program changes for the Maine department of Corrections drew some hard questions from Legislators in Augusta on Wednesday. The proposed two-year budget for the department is actually a 3% increase, but Deputy commissioner Denise Lord says the department still needs to make major changes in staffing and programs to stay within that amount. The Baldacci Administration is proposing to close prisoner housing units at four locations: the Charleston correctional center in Charleston, the Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport, the Maine Correctional Center in Windham and the Bolduc Minimum Security Unit in Warren. Corrections Commissioner Marty Magnusson told the Legislature’s Appropriations and criminal Justice committees he also plans to transfer several dozen more inmates to county jails, and transfer more than 100 long-term inmates to a private prison facility in Minnesota. All these changes will result in the layoff of 39 more staff members.

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The Franklin County jail in Maine may become a short-term holding center as part of a statewide correctional facilities overhaul.  The Kennebec Morning Sentinel reports:

Gov. John Baldacci announced in 2007 that the correctional facilities’ consolidation would save money, increase efficiency and provide standardized services … Franklin County officials have been part of the decision-making process. Their jail would become a 72-hour holding facility where detainees stay while awaiting bail or are released for other reasons. Long-term prisoners and inmates awaiting trial would go to other county jails.   “I’m a little more agreeable with doing this than I was at the onset, but I think I see the handwriting on the wall,” Commissioner Fred Hardy said Tuesday. “What I see is a hell of a lot of people losing their jobs.”

The new state-run system would close jails in Oxford, Franklin, Piscataquis and Waldo counties. Nichols emphasized reduced administrative overhead, increased purchasing clout, stronger contract negotiations for services and more efficiency and flexibility in staffing and training.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, ME Franklin County, Maine

Although many people fight fiercely to block prisons from coming to town, Charleston, Maine, and other communities are feeling an opposite impulse these days. They are fighting to keep their prisons from going away, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Many states, including Maine, Ohio, Washington and New York, want to close or consolidate prisons to save money. Here in Maine, Gov. John Baldacci wants to mothball part of Charleston Correctional Facility and relocate nearly 40% of the inmates, which would cut work-release crews.  But this farming town of 1,500 wants its criminal element to stick around. Town leaders say they don’t know what they will do without the free or ultra-cheap labor the jailbirds provide. “Oh my goodness, gracious, they are such an asset — they are our public-works department,” said Selectwoman Terri-Lynn Hall.

Last year, Charleston’s prisoners did 39,337 hours of community work, prison officials say, roughly the equivalent of 19 full-timers. Inmates maintain the five local cemeteries, set up election booths and hang Veteran’s Day flags. They built the log-cabin “snack shack” at a local park, and helped bust up beaver dams in a stream that runs along Bacon Road … Closure is also being fought by city officials and the local Habitat for Humanity. Habitat’s truck driver, Jesse Smith, has a bad back, so he uses convicts to help him lug around fridges and other heavy items. Sometimes, he says, the inmates gripe about prison life. “I tell these boys, ‘Don’t get an attitude, you’re the one who done it,’ ” Mr. Smith says.

County Commissioner Jim Carmichael says closure is being considered because the prison isn’t profitable, and it’s not fair for cities and towns to get “free labor at a cost to the county.”

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A dorm at Charleston Prison

A reprieve of six months has been given to 45 inmates who would have been relocated and to 15 employees whose jobs were to be eliminated at the Charleston Correctional Facility under Maine Gov. John Baldacci’s jail consolidation plan.

Recognizing the importance of the restitution program offered at the minimum-security prison and the need for a long-range corrections plan, the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee searched for and found about $560,000 in cuts in other programs to keep the unit targeted for closure at Charleston in operation until June 30, the end of this fiscal year.  The Appropriations Committee accepted the committee’s plan Tuesday …

Rep. Richard Sykes of Harrison, the Republican leader on the committee,  said the committee heard from many people opposed to the Charleston cuts.  “The transitional unit at Charleston [is] an outstanding program,” Sykes said. He said the program, in which inmates provide volunteer work for communities and nonprofit organizations, helps prepare inmates for life after prison. Rather than give the inmates $50 and a new suit before they are released, the program gives them vocational and social skills, he said.  To find the savings to keep the Charleston unit open for the remainder of the fiscal year, the committee recommended the elimination of the Department of Corrections’ chief advocate and another advocate in Warren, where the Maine State Prison is located. Those positions also were targeted for elimination in Baldacci’s plan.

There is a lot more detail at the Bangor Daily News.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Maine

There had been indications that 2009 was always going to be a tight money year. But the converging housing and credit crises have made the prospects that much bleaker. All across the country, States are facing huge spending cuts to rectify unbalanced budgets – and this time the problem is so severe that normally protected law-and-order budgets are facing significant cuts. Their budgets in crisis, governors, legislators and prison officials across the nation are making or considering policy changes that will likely remove tens of thousands of offenders from prisons and parole supervision.

“Prior to this fiscal crisis, legislators could tinker around the edges – but we’re now well past the tinkering stage,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration. “Many political leaders who weren’t comfortable enough, politically, to do it before can now – under the guise of fiscal responsibility – implement programs and policies that would be win/win situations, saving money and improving corrections,” Mauer said

In California, faced with a projected $42 billion deficit and prison overcrowding that has triggered a federal lawsuit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate parole for all offenders not convicted of violent or sex-related crimes, reducing the parole population by about 70,000. He also wants to divert more petty criminals to county jails and grant early release to more inmates – steps that could trim the prison population by 15,000 over the next 18 months.

In Kentucky, where the inmate population had been soaring, even some murderers and other violent offenders are benefiting from a temporary cost-saving program that has granted early release to nearly 2,000 inmates. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is proposing early release of about 1,000 inmates. New York Gov. David Paterson wants early release for 1,600 inmates as well as an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many nonviolent drug offenders.  Policy-makers in Michigan, one of four states that spend more money on prisons than higher education, are awaiting a report later this month from the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center on ways to trim fast-rising corrections costs, likely including sentencing and parole modifications.

“There’s a new openness to taking a look,” said state Sen. Alan Cropsey, a Republican who in the past has questioned some prison-reform proposals. “What we’ll see are changes being made that will have a positive impact four, five, six years down the road.”

Safety remains a potent factor. In California, for example, the state correctional officers’ union contends Schwarzenegger’s proposals will fuel more crime.  In Idaho, a combination of budget cuts and prison overcrowding contributed to an uprising Jan. 2 in a former prison workshop that was converted into a temporary cell block. Inmates who engaged in vandalism and arson had been placed there as part of a cost-cutting effort to move other prisoners back to Idaho from more expensive quarters at a private prison in Oklahoma.

In Florida, where prisons are so crowded that the state has acquired tents for possible use to house inmates, officials say 19 new prisons may be needed over the next five years. As an alternative, Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil told lawmakers they should re-evaluate the state’s hard-line sentencing policies and look at ways to help released inmates avoid returning to prison.

As budgetary pressures worsen, some advocacy groups are concerned that spending cuts will target the very programs needed to help inmates avoid re-offending after release – education, vocational and drug-treatment programs.

“The idea that we’d cut programs and then release inmates early is a toxic combination,” said Pat Nolan, vice president of Prison Fellowship. “Just opening prison doors and letting people out with no preparation – that’s cruel to the offender and dangerous to public.”

The Council of State Government’s Justice Center has been working with 10 states to develop options for curbing prison populations without jeopardizing public safety. Tactics used in Texas and Kansas have included early release for inmates who complete specified programs, more sophisticated community supervision of offenders, and expanded treatment and diversion programs.

“There’s an unprecedented level of interest in this kind of thinking,” said the Justice Center’s director, Michael Thompson. “It’s a combination of fiscal pressure and a certain fatigue of doing the same thing as 20 years ago and getting the same return.”

But before sentencing philosophies can be adjusted and recidivism programs put in place, the economic downturn is having more immediate affects on the system and on its employees.

In Kansas, for example, a juvenile correctional facility in Atchison was shut down; and the Kansas Department of Corrections is shutting down boot camp correctional facilities in Labette County. On Friday, Washington State DOC confirmed they will be making some layoffs. On January 14th WADOC. will be meeting with the Teamsters Union to talk about program cut backs and lay offs. They hope the reduction process will be completed in February or March. WADOC wants to close unit five and either unit one or unit four at the Washington State Penitentiary and temporarily close one unit at the camp at Coyote Ridge. Also all pay raises are being frozen until further notice.

Maine Gov. John Baldacci on Friday unveiled a $6.1 billion budget for the next two years that cuts funding for prisons. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the budget is in the state Department of Corrections. Baldacci proposes closing a 90-bed unit in the state prison in Warren, a 40-bed unit at the prison in Machiasport and a 94-unit bed at the Windham Correctional Center. To save money the budget calls for shipping 118 prisoners out of state. Baldacci said they would be prisoners with little or no family members in Maine, who are serving long sentences. Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson said it costs the state $103 a day per inmate to keep them here, and would be $66 to $70 to keep them out of state. A similar proposal was rejected by lawmakers in 2007, and it could face a tough sell this time around.

In Iowa, the 1.5 percent cut in state spending ordered last month could mean layoffs in the corrections system, but the department director said Friday he hopes to avoid them with a hiring freeze on vacant positions.Iowa Department of Corrections Director John Baldwin told members of the state board of corrections that he cannot guarantee that layoffs are off the table as the department considers ways to meet its obligations under the mandatory cuts. “The goal is to not lay anyone off,” he said. “Will we be successful? I can’t tell you.” The department has stopped hiring and will leave vacant positions unfilled, he said.

In Louisiana, the DOC is one of only two agencies so far that plans layoffs to cut costs. The corrections department intends to lay off 323 of its 6,400 employees, plus dozens of student workers, to help cut $11 million from its $554 million annual budget. Seventy people hired for a new skilled nursing unit for prisoners will be let go because the facility at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel won’t expand as planned.

Citing safety concerns, the Police Benevolent Association, which represents Florida corrections officers, held a news conference in Tallahassee on Friday to speak out against the possible elimination of corrections officers jobs in the budget process.

“Since the last round of cuts, we’ve had two critical incidents in the prisons where a female officer was killed and one was sexually assaulted,” Jim Baiardi with the PBA said. “The staff’s backs are up against the wall.”

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The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 Census of Federal and State Correctional Facilities.  The document has a wealth of data across all States, including the numbers of privately-operated facilities.

The document can be accessed from the Basic Stats list at the top right sidebar.

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• Gov. Baldacci of Maine orders all departments to find 10% budget cuts.  “No one is exempted from this, not human services or education or corrections,” Finance Commissioner Ryan Low said.
• Florida DOC now have sniffer dogs trained to find cell phones.
• Colorado DOC will maintain its HQ in Colorado Springs, despite incentives to move.

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A company that provided medical services to Franklin County ME inmates ceased operations Monday until an agreement with Franklin County commissioners is reached.

Commissioners learned of Allied Resources for Correctional Health Inc.’s intent late Sunday afternoon after jail administrator Sandra Collins visited the facility and opened a certified letter from Allied mailed Thursday and received Saturday …

ARCH submitted its intent to opt-out of its three-year contract in a July 31 letter. The contract expires Dec. 31. Although there is an opt-out clause in the contract, commissioners decided to hold the jail’s health contractor to the agreement, which requires a 60-day written notice before termination. That period ends Sept. 30.  After receiving no bids to provide the service, commissioners voted last Tuesday to ask ARCH to continue providing services until at least November, recognizing it will cost about 8 percent above the contract price.  “This has left us in a quandary,” Pike said. “Allied agreed that they would not leave us uncovered” …

Finances are one element requiring discussion before continued association with the county according to the letter. Other issues of performance and procedures at the jail, which present potential liability for ARCH, were included in a May letter sent to Pike and have not been resolved, according to the new letter. The May letter also included the provider’s financial position, which said contract costs exceed income, leaving a loss over the past five years. Pike said previously an Allied representative stated it was losing $600 a month providing service to the Franklin County Jail. “If they would come to us and say we would continue for X number of dollars, but they won’t tell us what they need. They need to tell the sheriff what the problems are,” said Commissioner Fred Hardy.

More on this story at the Lewiston Sun-Journal

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