By Amanda Estes

Staff Writer

    In an ongoing initiative to make county government
more transparent to the public, Cumberland County officials invited
municipal and state officials to take a tour of the Cumberland County
Jail in Portland on Monday.

    Jail Administrator Major Francine Breton and Captain
Wayne Pike led the tour along with county officials Sheriff Mark Dion,
County Manager Peter Crichton and Commissioner Richard Feeney.
Municipal officials included Councilor Maxine Beecher and City Manager
Ted Jankowski from South Portland and councilors Mary Ann Lynch and
David Backer from Cape Elizabeth. Jack Berman, a private citizen from
South Portland, was also present.  

     “County government is the middle layer and
most people don’t understand much about it,” said Commissioner Richard
Feeney. “Councilors serve on the county’s budget advisory committee,
and when they first come aboard, some don’t even know where the county
office is.”

    The purpose of the tour was to make municipal
officials aware of how the jail operates and how it affects the county
budget. Breton led the group through a general housing or minimum
security area, the maximum security area, the kitchen, the master
control or surveillance area, and the medical unit. 

    The focus of the tour was the medical unit and the
drastic increase in inmate medical costs that is currently driving the
county budget.  In 2000, the jail’s medical costs were $ 750,000
and this year, Dion said the county was scheduled to spend $2.9
million, which will mostly be used to provide inmates with
antipsychotic drugs.

    “The problem is that people come in on
pre-prescribed meds and the jail is obligated to continue those meds,”
said Feeney.

    “I spend more time functioning as a paradoctor than
as a police officer,” Dion said.  “Two-thirds of the inmates
require antipsychotic drugs and six percent have persistent chronic
mental illnesses. At one point in June, 100 percent of the detainees
required antipsychotic drugs. “

    “We did 710 medical intakes last year and 600 out of
those were referrals to the psychiatric department,” said Diane North,
the health services administrator.   

    The medical unit, which serves over 500 inmates, has
four patient units, one exam room, and one dental suite that also
serves as a meeting place, office space, and storage space.

    “We are working in cramped quarters,” said North.

    The unit is also equipped with a negative pressure
unit, which is used to isolate inmates with contagious illnesses such
as tuberculosis. North said that the medical department should have at
least two negative pressure units. Medical services also lacks an x-ray
machine, which means an inmate, must be transported to and from another
facility at the county’s expense.

    Dion also said that when an inmate requires serious
medical attention such as surgery, he requires two deputies “on the
person, 24/7.” A low risk inmate requires one deputy.

    In the mental health department, there are two
full-time mental health clinicians, and one full-time substance abuse
counselor.

    Dion said physicians and psychiatrists are available
on a limited basis and second to funding for medications, the jail
needs more funding for nurses and other medical staff.

    Dion said that the “mental health system has been
defaulted to the jail” due to several factors including the lack of a
public health system to recognize and treat mental illness when an
individual first exhibits symptoms.  He said the state has also
neglected to recognize inmates as mentally ill, which prevents the jail
from receiving state funds. 

    In 2000, the Portland Police Department received
local grants through the Maine chapter of the National Alliance for the
Mentally Ill (NAMI) to fund Crisis Intervention Team training (CIT) to
help officers identify signs of serious mental illness, which Dion said
“ gives the appearance that we’re managing the problem.”

    CIT trained officers’ consult with the placement of
inmates, but Dion said the program is “asking the police officers to
practice the best medicine they know how.”

    “I invited that state in to look at jail files
because they said I was a politician, exaggerating, but they left
quietly because I wasn’t lying. Cumberland County spends an average of
$4,200 per inmate compared to the national average of $1,800-$2,000 per
inmate,” he said. 

    “The state has left funding where it was in 1999,”
said Crichton. “It hasn’t recognized the increase in costs. The revenue
we take in hasn’t changed that much, its gone from $3 million to $5
million.”

    The revenue is generated from leasing beds to other
counties as well as the federal government. Dion said the federal
government is the jail’s largest customer and  U.S. Marshalls
reserved 25 beds, but at his last check, there were 103 federal inmates
in the jail.

    Dion also said, “All the work that can be done by
prisoners, is done by prisoners and I figure that is $400,000 in labor
given back to the jail. Prisoners also perform over $1 million of labor
outside of the jail, which is a way of returning some tax money to your
communities.”

    “ People say let’s trim the fat, but it’s closer to let’s trim the bone,” he said.