As executive director of the Maine Turnpike Authority, Paul Violette traveled around the world, spending weeks in the French Riviera and weekends on Martha’s Vineyard.
He stayed at the Chateau Frontenac while attending Quebec’s Winter Carnival. He racked up $4,350 in two nights at the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox, Mass. He enjoyed spa treatments, casino outings and tailored tuxedos.
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Motorists who use Maine’s only toll highway paid for it.
The public will again foot the bill for Violette, but this time for much more humble accommodations.
Violette was sentenced Friday to spend 3½ years in state prison for stealing as much as $230,000 from the Maine Turnpike Authority from 2003 to 2010. He is scheduled to report Friday to the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, where he will be greeted at the door by a state corrections officer.
Dress is casual.
There is no spa.
When he arrives, Violette will turn over his clothing and belongings and be issued his new prison-made wardrobe: four pairs of jeans, four blue button-down poplin shirts, four gray sweatshirts, underwear, socks, a pair of canvas sneakers, and a watch cap to wear when it gets cold.
He will stay in the prison’s reception pod for classification until a bed opens in an appropriate housing unit. That can take three weeks to two months.
The prison houses about 660 prisoners, taking in 80 to 90 a month.
“In that first 20 days to two months, he’s going to be in a high-security building until we find a space for him,” said Scott Burnheimer, superintendent of the Maine Correctional Center. “They’re in their cells all but three hours a day in that area.”
Prison officials assign each inmate a risk status and a classification after reviewing police reports, the crime and the prisoner’s criminal record.
As a white-collar criminal with no history of violence, Violette is a low security risk and will most likely be sent to the prison’s minimum-security section.
He eventually will find himself living in a 12-foot-by-10-foot room with four steel bunks, plastic-wrapped mattresses and three other men. Prisoners who behave well are rewarded by being moved into three-person rooms.
“They don’t get to pick who their roommates are,” Burnheimer said.
The minimum-security wings are like a college dorm, with a shared bathroom at the end of each hall. The doors are left unlocked, although prisoners must be in their cells by 11 p.m. on weekdays, midnight on weekends.
There is a pool table and a communal television. Prisoners are allowed to bring their own televisions to use in their rooms, Burnheimer said. Over-the-air reception is impossible inside the steel and concrete of the prison, so the prison provides Time Warner’s basic cable package.
Recreation time runs from 6:40 to 8:15 p.m. There are weights, an asphalt courtyard and a basketball hoop. In the summer, prisoners can play softball.
In France, Violette dined at Le Grand Vefour, where the menu includes saut? frog legs in sage sauce with garlic bread, and marrow on a bed of tomatoes.
In Windham, Violette will get three square meals a day — very square. Inmates get 2,400 calories a day in a low-fat, low-sodium diet. The meals are served on a five-week rotation.
“Every day’s menu is reviewed for calories and nutrition, so they’re balanced,” Burnheimer said. The prison tries to avoid sugary foods.
“We don’t serve cakes anymore,” he said. “We serve a fruit as a dessert.”
Prisoners do have work opportunities.
The Maine Correctional Center offers jobs in the wood shop, garment, reuphosltery and embroidery industries. There also are jobs in the kitchen and the laundry, and maintenance tasks in the prison.
A prisoner who’s assigned to a job in the prison can get seven days taken off his or her sentence each month, so it’s likely that Violette won’t serve three years.
The state’s minimum-security facilities, Charleston and Bolduc — which have no fences, easier visiting arrangements and ample opportunity for working off the grounds — may be in Violette’s future. They’re available to inmates with less than three years left on their sentences.
The prison in Windham is a humane facility. It earned a nearly perfect assessment score from the American Correctional Association last year.
Still, said Assistant Attorney General Leanne Robbin, who prosecuted Violette: “Three and a half years is no vacation. … It’s a significant period of time for a white-collar offender to spend behind bars.”
Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at: dhench@pressherald.com
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