WARREN (AP) – For decades, Maine’s prison system was known for its notorious East Wing, a cell block eerily reminiscent of something from a 1930s movie.

The old prison was the scene of violence, including murder. Investigations were launched and lawsuits over crowding and cruel and inhumane conditions were filed.

Now the East Wing and all other dreary vestiges of the prison’s past are gone. With its rebuilt and overhauled prison system, Maine’s prisons are joining an elite group that have won national accreditation.

The Maine system’s dramatic turnaround from one of the worst to one of the nation’s best is earned largely on the basis of detailed inspections by the independent American Correctional Association.

“I really think the citizens of Maine ought to be proud of what the (Corrections) Department has done,” said Jeffrey Washington, deputy executive director of the ACA, which conducts onsite audits to see if its rigid standards for conditions, administration and programs are being met.

Washington said only seven states have corrections systems that are completely accredited: New York, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Nebraska and Florida. Maine approaches that status with about 85 percent of its prison population in accredited facilities.

Maine’s maximum security state prison and nearby prerelease Bolduc Correctional Facility, both in the rural, coastal town of Warren, won nearly perfect scores in recent audits, as did youth centers in Charleston and South Portland. The Maine Correctional Center in Windham won certification after auditors’ inspections for nearly 500 standards.

Auditors opened desk drawers and broom closets to look for items that could be fashioned into weapons. They wiped their fingers along kitchen exhaust filters to look for grease, peered into drains to see if they were clean, and climbed into attics to check cleanliness of air exchange units.

They interviewed prisoners, peppered prison staff with questions, pored over logbooks, medical records and other paperwork, and sat in on programs.

“Every part of the facility is under the microscope,” said state Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson. Warden Jeffrey Merrill said auditors could even distinguish dirt that might have accumulated over days from what may have just been dragged in from the outside.

“They know the difference between old dirt and new dirt,” he said.

The Warren prison, which replaced the fortress-like lockup in neighboring Thomaston after it opened in February 2002, “was one of the cleanest, quietest and best-operated correctional facilities that I have ever visited,” said audit team member Joseph Costello. As for Bolduc, he called it “one of the elite community program facilities in the country.”

Together, they house 1,100 of the prison system’s 2,000 adults.

“This was as easy an audit as it gets,” Costello said after 2-day reviews at each of the two Warren compounds.

Jeff Rogers, a retired Kentucky juvenile justice official who was part of the team that inspected the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, called it “one of the finest facilities I have ever had the experience to visit in my years in juvenile corrections.”

“The youth of Maine are getting the best possible treatment offered anywhere,” Rogers wrote in an e-mail to Maine Gov. John Baldacci.

His observations illustrate a dramatic transition from a little more than a decade ago when Maine’s former youth center, a crowded, Victorian-era facility where use of restraints had fallen under scrutiny, was called one of the worst in the country.

In 1990, the state’s corrections system was the nation’s ninth-most overcrowded. A federal judge ruled in a court case filed by an inmate that he had been “willfully and cruelly” mistreated and ordered $2,500 in damages. Human rights group Amnesty International, appalled by prison conditions, threatened a lawsuit, which Magnusson says the state could not have won.

“Our department was circling the drain on both the adult and juvenile sides,” said Magnusson, a former Thomaston warden. “We couldn’t keep doing business the way we were doing.”

In 1998, then-Gov. Angus King proposed a phased-in overhaul that would combine surplus cash that had begun to pour into state coffers with long-term borrowing. Of the roughly $153 million ultimately spent, more than half went to construction of the new prison compound in Warren.

Today, the dingy, cluttered cellblocks and walls of steel bars that once formed Maine prisoners’ surroundings are replaced by brightly colored cells – each with a sealed window allowing in natural light. Instead of bars, doors are solid metal with glass windows. Hallways are bright and floors are spotless.

“It’s not a bad place to be,” said inmate Mark Prescott, whose art includes a large fish mural that hangs in the prison’s public entry hall. “You see prisons on TV and compared to them, it’s a good place to be.”

On a recent afternoon, daylight poured into a large meeting room where a Bible study class sat in a circle. Down the hall, a volunteer taught algebra to a full classroom of inmates. Others played rock music in a room set up as a studio. The weightlifting room also was busy, as were a pool hall and gym where prisoners played basketball.

Many prisoners also work in the 51,000-square-foot woodworking shop where inmates earn money for restitution, child support and personal items. As the ACA audit showed, each of the thousands of tools – from individual drill bits to paint sprayed from cans – must be accounted for at the end of the work period.

In a courtyard outside, a greenhouse stood ready for a busy spring when inmates will grow plants that decorate the outside.

Prisoners clearly benefit from the improved conditions. But so do taxpayers because the prison is so efficient, Magnusson said.

For example, fewer staff are needed for a larger number of prisoners at the new Warren prison, saving personnel costs. An accredited institution is also safer, more secure and protects that state in potential lawsuits over conditions. And the state no longer has to spend money to make Band-Aid repairs to crumbling buildings.

While auditors acknowledged that Maine’s system is now over capacity by 150, they factored in trends and plans to reverse that pattern.

It’s not mandatory for states to subject themselves to accreditation audits. Of the facilities that do undergo review, only one in 10 passes. The team that audited Long Creek told Maine officials they had flunked the last four facilities they had inspected, Merrill said.

On the Net:

American Correctional Association: www.aca.org/

Maine Department of Corrections: www.maine.gov/corrections/

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