AUBURN – The number of prisoners inside the once-crowded Androscoggin County Jail is falling.

And no one seems to know why.

Since December, the population in the 142-bed facility has shrunk from an all-time high of 160 a year ago to 100 or less in recent weeks. Averages over entire months have similarly slipped, from 136 last September to 110 this May.

Once forced to put its prisoners wherever there was an empty bed, the jail now has the luxury of keeping all of its more violent inmates in higher security areas.

It is even telling other Maine jails, most of which are overcrowded, to send their surplus inmates here.

“I really believe this is just a glitch,” said Capt. John Lebel, the administrator of the Auburn jail. “The numbers will go back up.” However, it has lasted too long to be dismissed out of hand.

Overall, Maine’s jails have watched their populations level off, said Denise Lord, the state’s associate corrections commissioner.

About 1,100 people currently reside in Maine jails. There are 15 in all, one for each county except Sagadahoc, which sends its prisoners to Kennebec County.

Meanwhile, there are close to 2,000 people in the state-run prisons. Lord said the prisons have taken on a greater share of the state’s behind-bars population than ever, easing the crowding in the counties.

In some cases, judges may be sentencing people to slightly longer sentences so they will be sent to state facilities rather than county ones. Maine also has seen a small decline in crime. It too may be having an effect, she said.

Car thefts, arsons, assaults and murders all declined in 2002, driving a half-percentage-point drop in the overall crime rate. The decline was greater in some places. In Auburn, the number of serious crimes fell by nearly 25 percent.

The falling crime rate may be helping the jail’s population, said Norm Croteau, the region’s district attorney. But there must be other reasons to explain the jail’s population drop, he said.

Lebel has asked Croteau for insight.

“It’s funny. You can’t point to any one thing,” Croteau said. “It’s going to be four of five little ones.”

It might be the falling crime rate, a change in the way the judges are levying sentences or something that he hasn’t thought of, he said.

His office, which prosecutes cases in the superior and district courts, is doing nothing different, he said.

Whatever it is, Lebel said he’s thankful.

The tension among the jail’s guards has lessened. “It really is a break for the staff,” he said.

With fewer prisoners, guards have the ability to remove someone who is difficult and place him or her elsewhere, an adult version of a child’s “time-out.”

“I’m using the facility the way it should be used,” Lebel said. Though the state rates the jail’s capacity at 142 beds, it was originally designed for 98.

The jail opened in 1990. Its current annual budget tops $3.2 million.

Lebel may even save some money, he said.

Fewer prisoners means less food to buy, medicine to supply and clothes to wash. Meanwhile, the opportunity to board prisoners from other jails, charging about $70 per prisoner each day, means a new revenue stream is opening up.

Both the Franklin County Jail in Farmington and the Cumberland County Jail in Portland are crowded.

The Farmington jail has a rated capacity of 23 but holds nearly double that many.

On Tuesday, there were 40 people inside, said Carl Stinchfield, the jail’s assistant administrator. In May, the average population was 36. In April, the average was 33.

At the Portland jail, the biggest in Maine, a unit meant to hold fewer than 400 had a population of 426 on Tuesday. The jail has more room but too few guards, said Capt. Francine Breton, the jail’s acting administrator.

Empty beds are in demand, but there have been few takers at Androscoggin County, Lebel said. Space here tends to be entirely in the minimum security area.

“Jails don’t want to send us their minimum security prisoners,” Lebel said. “They want to send us the maximums.”

dhartill@sunjournal.com

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