Just five years after the state spent $140 million improving its prisons, Department of Corrections officials are warning the state already needs more space.

The inmate population already exceeds the capacity of state’s six adult prisons, which are designed to hold up to 1,946 people. The state expects to have 1,192 prisoners by the end of this year and 2,245 by the end of 2009. The women’s population is nearly double what the 70 beds at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham can hold.

How can this be possible in a state with one of the lowest crime rates in the country?

Well, for starters, the improvements made to the state’s prisons in 2001 – the addition to the maximum-security prison in Warren and of the 70 beds for women at the prison in Windham – were overdue.

Voters had rejected plenty of prison bonds – in 1989, 1990 and 1991 – before Gov. Angus King found a way around the will – or lack thereof – of the people. King used the Maine Governmental Facilities Authority, which can issue bonds without voter approval, to get the additions built.

The second big problem is one that ails both the state and federal prison system – putting criminals in jail is a good way for a politician to win votes, and letting them out, typically, is not.

To demonstrate this, one need look no further than the words of state Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, the chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, who was speaking at a press conference last week to call attention to the prison overcrowding problems the state faces.

“We’ll have to think about bricks and mortar,” said Diamond. “We can’t continue to call ourselves tough on crime and not have cells to put people in.”

Notice the emphasis on calling “ourselves tough on crime.” Diamond gained plenty of publicity through his support of Tina’s Law – a law passed after the death of Tina Turcotte of Scarborough that stiffened the penalties for people caught driving with suspended licenses.

While Tina’s Law was good legislation that will help to avert tragic deaths like Turcotte’s, extending prison sentences for some crimes without shortening them for other crimes will place a larger burden on the state’s prison system.

The state needs to constantly examine who is serving prison and why and question whether everyone in prison needs to be there. According to some estimates, as much as one-third of the state’s inmates are serving time for probation and bail violations. Many of those violations are non-violent technicalities that shouldn’t require jail time.

Legislators like Diamond should be less concerned about how they can characterize themselves during their next campaign – “tough on crime” – and more focused on fair and just prison terms for criminals.

Let’s focus on keeping violent criminals behind bars and non-violent criminals out of prison and in rehabilitation. Let’s focus on keeping the public safe and creating a prison system that works to rehabilitate inmates, rather than re-elect politicians.

Brendan Moran, editor