I hesitate to write about another negative trend in
Southern Maine because I don’t want to convey that I am a pessimist,
however, I feel compelled to write about my experience at the
Cumberland County Jail. My experience there cleared up a lot of
misconceptions in my own mind and if I can’t do that for others, I hope
that individuals will take the time to seek out more information about
the jail’s current state.

    Approaching the jail, I had no idea what to expect,
but I knew that I was being given an opportunity to see how the jail
operates first hand. Like everyone else, I had heard the complaints
that the jail is sucking up all of the tax payers’ money, but the
reasons behind the jail’s budget increases were not so readily
available. Prior to the tour, I learned that the jail was suffering
from a combination of increasing medical costs, a lack of funds, and a
lack of state responsibility.

    Ironically, the night before my jail visit, I
watched a “60 Minutes” story about an inmate that was chained to a slab
until he died of thirst. The man suffered from manic depression and his
criminal history consisted of a shoplifting incident. Not surprisingly,
the story was mentioned prior to the tour. I don’t mean to imply that
there has been any mistreatment by jail officials at Cumberland County,
but I simply mean to reinforce that jails cannot become a substitute
for a mental health facility. A story like this evokes anger because
the inmate was grossly mistreated. It is unlikely that people in
Cumberland County will become angry about housing the mentally ill in
our local facility because as long as no one is being seriously harmed,
there isn’t a problem.

    Despite the best efforts of the staff, the medical
department is not equipped to operate as both full-time physicians and
full-time psychiatrists. As it stands now, the department has been
forced to conduct its administrative business in closets. Some tax
payers become angry when we have to foot the bill for transporting
inmates to receive outside care because they view it as special
treatment for a criminal that doesn’t deserve it. We tend to see any
inmate, and I am guilty of this as well, as the epitome of a criminal
and we rarely stop to consider how they arrived at the jail. If I saw
two deputies transferring an inmate into a medical facility, I would
automatically assume that the person was a threat to the public. I
would be less likely to consider the possibility that the individual
may have a mental illness and be of more danger to himself or herself.
I think this is a common thought process that isn’t necessarily
something to be ashamed of, but rather it is just that people
automatically associate certain images with criminals.

    It is daunting to me that two-thirds of the
detainees in the Cumberland County Jail require some sort of
antipsychotic drug and that six percent suffer from a chronic mental
illness. These are the statistics I would expect to see associated with
a hospital rather than a corrections facility. How can we reasonably
expect the jail to even come close to meeting its medical costs when
the general consensus is that the jail has already cost the county too
much?

    There are major gaps in the information link between
the state, the county, and the municipalities. The state’s refusal to
provide even adequate funding for the jail, simply reinforces the
public’s belief that it is a money pit. How can the public understand
the challenges that the jail is facing when the state seems to have no
opinion on the matter?

    Personally, I think talking about a jail and mental
illness in the same sentence makes people nervous and uncomfortable. It
conjures up dark images of torture and electro-shock therapy and a time
when mentally ill individuals were treated worse than hardened
criminals. As a society, we like to think that we have come a long way
in understanding mental illness. Clearly, we still have a ways to go,
if mentally ill people are being diverted to jail without a second
thought. Education is a key component in getting the public to realize
that the jail has been forced to operate at a precarious level. As a
community, it seems reckless and counter-intuitive to continue to
demand so much from jail and county officials without giving something
back in return.