WINDHAM, Maine — State leaders cut the ribbon Wednesday on the redesigned Maine Correctional Center in Windham, a facility that features an emphasis on rehabilitation and was once part of a 2022 campaign spat between Gov. Janet Mills and former Gov. Paul LePage.
Renovations began in 2018 on the prison, which was built on the grounds of what had been a 104-year-old facility. Officials said Wednesday a few tasks remain to wrap up the $142 million project that provides more space for rehabilitative programs and enhanced security.
Mills and Corrections Commissioner Randy Liberty were among the officials to speak during the ceremony, which featured an Honor Guard procession, raising of flags, ribbon cutting and tours of the prison that holds up to 582 male and 149 female incarcerated residents.
A tour of part of the grounds, including the family visitation area and outdoor space near the kitchen, revealed rows of dirt awaiting crops that inmates will grow through the prison’s organic farming program.
Liberty said the facility in Windham expects to harvest about 35,000 pounds of produce, part of the roughly 200,000 pounds produced by DOC facilities throughout Maine.
Liberty and Deputy Commissioner Anthony Cantillo also noted the prison will have a food processing center open by next summer to complement the garden area and greenhouse that will reduce waste through composting.
“I’ve had seven commissioners nationally ask to come visit what we’re doing here,” Liberty said. “To be able to do this inside the fence and provide opportunities really to do garden therapy to some degree, I think [it] will be very successful.”
Sticking with the emphasis on restorative instead of punitive justice, Mills mentioned how the correctional center also offers a program to help women with “long-term medical and mental health needs.”
Mills, a Democrat, also alluded Wednesday to her predecessor, LePage, without naming the Republican by saying her administration inherited the prison project that was tens of millions of dollars over budget.
The Maine Correctional Center was at the center of one of many disputes between Mills and LePage as they vied for the governor’s office in 2022. Mills defeated LePage, who ran the state from 2011 to 2019, to earn her second term.
LePage criticized the Mills administration for dropping his plan to build a drug treatment facility at the correctional center in Windham.
Mills’ corrections department said at the time the LePage-era prison renovation plan was $75 million over budget when she took office.
“What a problem to inherit,” Mills quipped Wednesday, praising the officials who got the project “back within budget” and also completed work on the Downeast Correctional Center in Machiasport.
LePage, who had derided the overdose reversing drug naloxone as “fake security for drug addicts,” had pitched an extension of Maine’s drug court program in which those accused of some drug crimes would spend a night in jail and then go through a yearlong treatment program to have their records expunged upon completion.
But Liberty, who was the Maine State Prison warden under LePage and a former Kennebec County sheriff, previously said the LePage model “is not best practice” since prisons deal with people toward the end of their time in the criminal justice system and such an idea could extend their time in it.
On Wednesday, Liberty said his department has treated about 1,900 incarcerated residents for addiction in the past two and a half years and helped reduce prisoner overdose fatalities. The state reported 10,110 total overdoses in 2022, including 716 suspected or confirmed overdose deaths, the third straight year Maine broke its record for overdose fatalities.
Mentioning to reporters how his father and a nephew had been incarcerated, Liberty added the seven state-run prisons in Maine allow inmates to continue any addiction treatment they are receiving when they begin their detention.
“We validate that,” Liberty said.
