A lawmaker who has generally collaborated with Gov. Janet Mills on juvenile justice reform has proposed an idea to transform Maine’s only youth prison into a more treatment-focused facility for adolescents in the juvenile justice system.
The bill from Rep. Michael Brennan, D-Portland, is a novel idea that revives a dormant effort to stop using Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland in its current form.
For that reason, it could face hurdles: The Democratic governor and her administration have opposed past attempts by lawmakers to close Long Creek, including in 2021 when Mills vetoed a bill to close the prison and reallocate its budget into more therapeutic programs.
This proposal could find traction in part due to its sponsor. Brennan has worked more closely with the administration on his efforts to shift Maine toward a more community-based response to juvenile crime, taking a more incremental approach that has been more successful at turning bills into law than lawmakers who have pursued more dramatic overhauls.
Brennan’s plan to repurpose the Long Creek campus would still mark a significant change to the prison that anchors Maine’s juvenile justice system. It is still unclear whether it has buy-in from Mills or her corrections department. Spokespeople for the governor’s office and Corrections Commissioner Randall Liberty did not respond to requests for comment.
Brennan said in an interview on Tuesday that he shared early drafts of the legislation with representatives for both a few months ago but was unaware of their official position.
“I would say this: I think they’re open to the conversation,” Brennan said.
The bill would authorize the state to borrow $10 million to renovate Long Creek into a less prison-like building that is still secure no later than early 2027. Much like at an adult prison, Long Creek has a fence around its campus, and teenagers detained there sleep at night in rooms that look like cells.
The funds would also go toward setting up two additional programs: one for youth leaving Long Creek to help with their reintegration, and another that would be an alternative residential program.
The renovated building would be outfitted with services to address the underlying reasons of youth incarceration, including programs that help youth with housing, behavioral health, substance use disorder, and education. Youth at Long Creek overwhelmingly have histories of mental health struggles and trauma.
The bill also requires the Department of Corrections and the Department of Health and Human Services to set up a council tasked with reinvesting funds currently dedicated to youth incarceration into more community-based services for youth in the juvenile justice system.
Brennan said the idea for the bill came after watching state corrections officials struggle for years to establish alternative secure programs to Long Creek.
When Mills vetoed the attempt to close the prison in 2021, she instead supported a Brennan proposal that directed the corrections department to scout locations for between two and four new alternative secure programs to Long Creek. In the years since, those efforts have failed or stalled out.
In that same time, what was once a vigorous effort by advocates and lawmakers to close Long Creek lost steam, with many believing that Mills, a former attorney general and district attorney, posed too great a roadblock for it to happen during her tenure.
But the underlying problems that inspired the closure effort have persisted. Tumultuous conditions and understaffing have continued to plague the facility, including a series of disturbances last year that forced staff to make a public cry for help, although corrections officials told lawmakers last month that staffing has improved.
Despite ongoing efforts to divert as many kids from Long Creek as possible, the state still suffers from a severe shortage of programs that prevent youth from ending up behind bars.
Brennan hopes his proposal helps rebuild some momentum around broader reforms to the wider system that began in 2019 and 2020 but was undercut by the pandemic, he said. Back then, he co-chaired a task force that commissioned a major report on the juvenile justice system that issued a series recommendations for improvements, including that Maine stop using Long Creek for juveniles and invest more in community-based programs.
Michael Kebede, policy director with the ACLU of Maine, which has long advocated for closing Long Creek, said his organization had not yet taken a formal position on the bill but was hopeful that it would restart the conversation around fulfilling the recommendations in the task force report.
The idea also struck Joseph Jackson, who leads the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition and previously supported a youth-led campaign to shut down Long Creek, as a step in the right direction for Maine.
“We can’t keep investing money in a facility of that size, particularly when there have been calls for other models for young people,” he said Tuesday. Long Creek is licensed for 168 beds but in recent years has an average population of around 30 or fewer . “I’m in support of anything that is going to shrink the size of juvenile incarceration in Maine.”
