AUBURN – A first-in-the-nation program at the local jail – training guards how to calm people who may be mentally ill – could become a model for jails around the country.

Advocates for the mentally ill plan to begin a study here in the coming weeks, interviewing guards and examining records inside the Androscoggin County Jail. The group, the Maine chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, plans to document the jail’s success, a first step toward persuading more facilities to do the same.

It may be a tough sell, though.

Correctional officials have complained for years that people with mental illnesses belong in hospital wards, not prison cells. Also, progress would be difficult to measure.

“It’s working,” said Lt. Michael Braun, the Auburn jail’s assistant administrator. “But we don’t have an easy yardstick.”

The program began last December, when 10 correctional officers were selected to receive a week of classes from local experts. Subjects ranged from substance abuse to legal issues to psychiatric medications.

Workers from Tri-County Mental Health Services and St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center taught some of the classes. Guards toured local facilities, and the health workers toured the jail.

The focus was on “de-escalation,” calming situations in which someone may be threatening to harm himself or others.

Traditionally, guards who saw someone exhibiting sudden mood shifts or other unexplained behavior might have demanded – sometimes aggressively – that the inmate stop. A guard also might ignore the person.

That has changed.

The newly trained correctional officers have created a crisis-intervention team. Two of these guards are on duty at all times. They cannot diagnose, but if someone’s behavior suggests a possible mental illness, a team member is called to the scene.

Suicide threats and behavioral issues account for many of the problems, particularly in the first 24 hours after an arrest. “That’s when it hits people the hardest,” said Braun.

Other times, people are having problems with illicit drugs. In a few cases, the inmates have been diagnosed with mental illnesses and have stopped taking prescribed medications.

“Some of them are wild,” Braun said. “But in a day or two, they can be acting pretty regular.”

During the first six months, the new team was alerted 29 times.

In only one case did it use force on an inmate. He was banging his head against the cinder block walls. To stop him from hurting himself, guards pushed him into a special chair. It has straps at the arms, legs and across the chest, effectively immobilizing the person.

He wasn’t hurt, Braun said.

So far, the Maine chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill is pleased.

The group led police in Portland to create their own crisis-intervention team last year. When that went well, the group decided to try a jail, and chose Androscoggin County.

Officials here seemed receptive and they had dealt with mental health issues, said Carol Carothers, the chapter’s executive director.

According to the national group, 16 percent of the inmates in U.S jails and prisons have mental illnesses. In Maine, that number is 25 percent.

“It’s skyrocketed in the past five years,” Carothers said.

In part, the increase is because of a shrinking number of beds in Maine’s hospitals, such as the Augusta Mental Health Institute.

Until something else changes, Maine’s jails will have to deal with this population, Carothers said. Teams like the one in Auburn could make jails more humane for people with mental illnesses.

This week, Carothers’ group was awarded $40,000 by the Maine Health Access Foundation to commission the study of the Androscoggin County Jail.

The Portland-based Public Health Resource Group, an independent research firm, will conduct the study and publish its results.

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