AUBURN — A top-to-bottom state inspection of the Androscoggin County Jail has resulted in a nearly perfect score.

Interviews with staff and inmates, a close look at the building and an examination of hundreds of files scored the jail at 100 percent on the state’s essential standards and 99.2 percent on mandatory standards.

“We came an awful long way,” Sheriff Guy Desjardins said. “I know there are some pundits out there who have been waiting for us to fall on our face and that didn’t happen.”

“I’m awful proud,” he said.

The inspectors visited the jail on July 19 and 20. The results came back last week.

The state’s 49-page report and accompanying three-page letter portrays a jail and staff that seem to do everything right, including engaging inmates in daily cleaning, serving safe and healthy meals, and performing appropriate safety checks.

“The inspection team conducted individual and group discussions with inmates,” wrote Robert Lancaster, a compliance manager for the Maine Department of Corrections. “Their responses to questions regarding visitation, program services, food services, medical services, religious services and staff relations were positive except for two isolated complaints.” Both complaints were followed up and deemed unfounded, Lancaster said.

Inmates complained to visitors that their meals were too small. The state checked out those complaints, too, but inspectors found that the meals met standards.

Jail Administrator John Lebel said he was hugely relieved to see the high score.

He and Desjardins credited the whole jail staff, particularly the compliance officer, Sgt. Dan Levesque, and Assistant Administrator Jeff Chute.

“To me, (compliance) is a day-to-day process,” Desjardins said. The state’s two categories of standards are based on 127 issues. Jail staff maintain color-coded files on each one.

The state’s last inspection of the jail came in 2008 and resulted in scores nearly as high. The only difference between the two tests was a fire hazard found among the waste baskets and plastic totes used to store inmates’ personal items. The county spent almost $10,000 to replace the waste bins and plastic totes, eliminating that problem.

No others popped up, despite the fact that the jail is a different facility than it was in 2008.

Since then, the facility joined the state’s network of county jails, in which it was ordered to give up many of its quieter, sentenced inmates to make room for the pretrial population from the Oxford County jail. The Auburn jail has grown more crowded, sometimes surging beyond its 160-inmate capacity. There have been two inmate deaths.

And there have been morale problems. Several lawsuits are pending and just last week, the County Commission and the union that includes most jail staffers finally settled on a contract. That dispute predates the last inspection by several months.

“It hasn’t been an easy road in the last three years,” Desjardins said. “But here we are.”

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