Corrections Officer Bruce Libby doesn’t consider many of the people he works around dangerous.

The 35-year veteran of the Maine Correctional Center in Windham guards the minimum security unit. This is where the nonviolent types end up. Security is a bit more lax. The men work during the day and have access to a day room with pool tables and TVs for their down time.

In Libby’s years there, he’s developed his own theory of what’s causing the overcrowding.

“We’re incarcerating the wrong types of people for too long,” Libby said.

The sentencing of criminals – who goes to prison and for how long – will be a target of the Legislature this fall as the Criminal Justice Committee looks for solutions to Maine’s prison overcrowding.

Under the microscope:

• The effects of mandatory minimum sentences, which have increased in Maine.

• Sentencing alternatives. What else is there besides prison?

• The threshold that decides if someone goes to county jail or state prison.

“Most of what the Legislature has done – and it’s not just in Maine, it’s all over – is that we have a patch quilt of sentencing guidelines for the judges,” said Rep. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, the committee’s House chair.

Two chairmen. Two opinions on alternatives.

Any solutions to prison overcrowding will likely come from the committee, which is run by two lawmakers with fundamentally different philosophies on incarceration.

Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, believes that bad guys belong in jail, in part as a deterrent against future crime. Gerzofsky, on the other hand, wants to explore prison alternatives for nonviolent offenders who pose a low risk of reoffending.

Gerzofsky said the committee will look at the options of home confinement, probation and programs such as the Drug Court, which substitutes a rigorous program for prison time.

There is also deferred sentencing, where a judge will impose a sentence that is delayed for a year, and then dismissed if the defendant completes a certain set of requirements laid out by the judge. This method of sentencing has been successful on the juvenile level, Gerzofsky said.

“This is a way to prevent juveniles from getting into the system, but it’s very limited on who those juveniles can be,” he said.

Gerzofsky’s sentencing alternatives target first-time offenders, with whom a risk assessment would be done to determine punishment, looking at what would likely happen to them if sent to prison versus staying home.

“What’s their risk assessment for reoffending?” Gerzofsky said. “What’s their risk assessment to society? What’s the risk assessment to our neighbors for them being on the street, but also the risk assessment of putting people (in prison) who might be better off getting treatment at home?”

Take Martha Stewart, for example, he said.

“Hit that woman in her pocketbook with a very good fine, use the ankle bracelets so she’s not allowed to leave her house,” Gerzofsky said. “She’s certainly not able to go to galas and parties, so she’s going to be inconvenienced at the least.”

But committee co-leader Diamond fears alternatives like home confinement may not be enough of a deterrent for criminals like Stewart, or chronic motor vehicle offenders who may not be violent, but who pose a serious and repeated risk to the public.

“These people are bad people and they’re put there for a reason,” Diamond said. “So my caution to the committee and the Legislature as a whole is, let’s not overreact and start taking people out.”

A lack of data

Currently, corrections officials say, data on sentencing in Maine and how it relates to prison overcrowding is scant. For instance, theories that judges have been handing out longer sentences in recent years or that alternative sentencing is ultimately reducing the prison population are based mostly on anecdotes.

The department is now compiling what data is available for the committee’s use.

Regardless of what that data shows, lawmakers anticipate that in addition to looking at alternative sentencing, they will examine the relationship between state prisons and county jails, and look at the effect of mandatory minimum sentences on overcrowding.

• Jail versus prison: Currently, a nine-month sentence will send a person to county jail. A sentence any longer than that will send that same person to state facilities – usually either the MCC or the Maine State Prison in Warren.

Corrections officials think changing that benchmark will ease overcrowding in the state system, especially if jails and prisons are consolidated under a current proposal from the Governor’s Office.

Maine State Prison Warden Jeffrey D. Merrill said that in 2002 when the Warren prison opened more defendants than normal were given sentences greater than nine months in order to send them off to the state facility, prosecutors knowing it had the beds and the programming. As a result, the prison filled up sooner than expected.

Gerzofsky is suggesting changing the nine-month threshold. In some states, he said, it takes as much as a two-year sentence to get placement in prison facilities.

• Mandatory minimums: Tina’s Law, which took effect in 2006, establishes mandatory minimum penalties for habitual motor vehicle offenders. Officials are just starting to see the effects of it now, and say it will lock more people up for longer.

Corrections officials point to an increase in similar laws setting mandatory minimum sentences – initiated by the Legislature – as a cause of overcrowding. Other Maine examples: A conviction for trafficking in the most serious drugs is four years; murder is 25 years.

“In the last several years it’s become politically popular to enhance sentences,” said Martin Magnusson, commissioner of the Department of Corrections.

Norman Croteau, district attorney for Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties, said the effectiveness of mandatory minimums depends on the philosophy behind the law.

They make the most sense when the type of crime is more uniform, such as in drug or traffic offenses. In other situations, such as sex abuse or domestic cases, there are an array of factors that make each one unique.

“To essentially create a mandatory minimum penalty because the legislative branch may be dissatisfied with the sentencing imposed by the judicial branch in a given case, I think is dangerous because it could create more uncertainty in the process,” Croteau said. “It is an infringement of the legislative branch into the judicial branch.”

Back in minimum unit

Libby doesn’t doubt that habitual motor vehicle offenders need to be punished, but he feels it shouldn’t take a yearly cost of $35,000 a person to be in a fenced-in facility.

It would be cheaper to send some of them to a place such as Charleston Correctional Facility, a pre-release center where inmates go out to work in the community, Libby said.

“Unless you kill someone with a motor vehicle, you should not be doing time in a fenced facility like this (for a motor vehicle crime),” Libby said. “An old drunk is an old drunk, and he’s going to be an old drunk. We have motor-vehicle offenders here that have killed no one.”

The public needs to get past the lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality, because it ends up costing taxpayers money, he added.

“The minute you get your TV ripped off, what do you want? What is your expectation?” Libby said. “You want the car with the blue lights. It’s OK if the guy driving the (police) car should shoot the guy if he sees him with your TV. If he doesn’t shoot him, you want (the thief) to go to court and end up in jail for 100 years. You’re entitled to expect that, and you should. But then don’t complain when we can’t house him.”