AUBURN – A more exclusive kind of inmate may soon fill the Androscoggin County Jail.

An analysis of Maine’s 15 county jails includes a tentative plan to send some sentenced inmates to other parts of the state, remaking the local jail into a pretrial facility.

The change would mean that fewer convicted criminals would reside in the Auburn facility. It would also create a tougher-to-manage population inside the 160-bed jail, Androscoggin County Sheriff Guy Desjardins said.

“We’re getting bits and pieces of the plan,” Desjardins said Thursday. “I think it’s going to work.”

It’s still preliminary. No plan has been finalized and some of the basic analysis – including a close look at the numbers of both pretrial and sentenced inmates – has yet to be done.

State corrections officials are determined to make changes.

Assistant Corrections Commissioner Denise Lord has said that the mission of every jail is being re-examined. In Franklin and Oxford counties, plans are evolving to reduce those jails to 72-hour holding facilities.

As part of those plans, Oxford County inmates would go to Androscoggin County when the 72 hours expires. Franklin County inmates would go to the Somerset County jail.

The change would likely add 15 to 20 inmates to the Auburn jail, Desjardins said.

To make room, a portion of Auburn’s convicted inmates, particularly those sentenced to more than 90 days, would be sent to other county facilities.

“It’s almost a wash,” Desjardins said.

It seems like a small change. However, pretrial inmates can be tougher to manage than those with sentences, Desjardins said.

Sentenced inmates typically want to perform assigned jobs and stay out of trouble to accumulate time off their sentences for good behavior.

For pretrial inmates, the only behavior tool the guards have is the threat of being sent to a higher-security area.

And since they do not have the option of working on janitorial crews – cleaning floors or shoveling sidewalks – they do their time in their cells or common rooms.

“They spend their days doing nothing,” Desjardins said.

The restructuring plan has been suggested before.

In 2007, an initiative headed by Gov. John Baldacci called for the closure of the Oxford County Jail, among others. Androscoggin County was earmarked as a pretrial facility. In the months that followed, the state gave up on the plan.

Instead, the state created a Board of Corrections in May 2008. It was charged with reshaping the 15 county jails into a unified system.

With new pressure to reduce budgets, the board and the state Department of Corrections went back to the old plan, at least in part.

So far, the board hadn’t talked about closing any facilities, Lord said earlier this month.

Desjardins said the change in his jail may be tough to endure, but he has faith that the corrections system will be improved when the changes are done.

“It’s frightening, but also a little exciting,” he said. “It’s like the process of labor. It may be painful, but you have something special at the end.”