Targeted Interventions Could Ease Maine\u27s Prison and Jail Populations

Overcrowding and rising costs in Maine’s corrections system have become a serious problem. In the past twenty years, the average daily population in state prisons has grown 74 percent, while county jails have grown 193 percent. To accommodate this growth, Maine, in 2004, spent $127,343,971, not including debt service, to operate the prisons and county jails. This brief examines state prison, county jail, and probation population trends since 2004 and identifies key factors driving the number of prisoner