The average Maine high school student-to-teacher ratio is 1:12.
So, too, is the rate of Maine children who have a parent who served time in jail. One in a dozen.
That’s shocking, and terribly sad.
Early this week, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its report on the emotional and financial toll children pay when a parent is incarcerated. In Maine, nearly 1 in 12 children face that reality, which is the highest rate in New England.
In real numbers, for example, that rate equals 437 children currently in the Lewiston School District who have or have had a parent in jail. That is more than the entire kindergarten population in Lewiston. In Auburn, there are fewer students in school, but statistically 298 have watched a parent go to jail.
In Farmington schools, the number is 146, and in schools across Oxford County the number is 700 children.
Statewide, the number is a whopping 20,000.
For context, that’s just over the population of Scarborough.
And, for shock value, Maine’s percent of children who have experienced a parent’s incarceration matches the numbers in Washington, D.C.
When a parent goes to jail, the children suddenly find themselves in homes with less income, less supervision and less support. When mom goes to jail, the children are often placed with extended family or moved to foster care, causing further disruption.
Amanda Woolford, director of women’s programs for the Maine Correctional Center’s Women’s Center in Windham, told the Sun Journal the state has made some strides in better connecting incarcerated moms with their children, allowing inmates to Skype with children and encouraging them to be in touch with a child’s teacher, which is terrific. The same level of programming is not yet available to dads, and it should be.
What would be better, though, would be to more aggressively address what is driving most of these parents to commit crimes that put them behind bars: addiction.
An overwhelming percent of all adults currently serving time in Maine’s jails and prisons are there in connection with drug- or alcohol-fueled behavior.
According to the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence, 80 percent of offenders abuse drugs or alcohol. Nearly 50 percent of inmates are clinically addicted, and about 60 percent of people arrested for most types of crimes test positive for illegal drugs at the time of arrest.
The number of addicted inmates in Maine is a crisis, according to jail administrators across the state.
Addicts rob to pay for drugs. Alcoholics drive drunk. Stoked by addiction and anger, domestic and sexual violence assault is widespread. Traffickers sell lethal products. The list goes on.
And, according to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, about 95 percent of former drug-using inmates return to drug use after release from prison, and 60 to 80 percent of them commit new drug-fueled crimes. And, go back to jail.
If that isn’t damaging enough to children, think about this: These parents didn’t become addicted and instantly scoot out to commit a crime, get arrested and go to jail.
These addicted parents are most often raising their children in undesirable homes and neighborhoods where poverty and crime reign. In homes where achievement has either lost value or it never existed in the first place, and where children are often unfed and neglected. And who knows how many crimes some parents commit before being detected by the legal system.
So, while a parent may spend a 30-day sentence in the county jail to pay for their crime, the children have long suffered in their own prisons at home with no where to go and no way out.
And, of course, many of these same children turn to a life of addiction and crime because they know no other.
Maine’s drug courts have offered some eligible inmates alternatives to jail time, where judges supervise their treatment and employment progress, but it’s a fraction of all defendants. Among that fraction, though, with the right motivation and supervision, many offenders get clean and stay straight. And, the cost to move a defendant through drug court is significantly less than the cost of incarceration with no treatment.
Maine made some progress this year with a new two-year $3.9 million spending plan to combat opioid use across the state, with $50,000 designated for treatment programs in each county jail. That should help ensure some people avoid jail altogether and some inmates leave jail in better condition to re-enter their homes and the workplace.
It’s not enough. And it isn’t entirely about money. And this can’t be a debate about whether addiction is a disease or a choice.
The solution to what is a very real and hyper-destructive crisis is to make treatment more accessible and more socially acceptable.
According to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, if this country were to expand drugs courts to treat all arrestees who are at risk for drug or alcohol abuse or dependence, we could save $32.4 billion — with a “b” — annually on corrections. And millions of crimes would be averted. Millions.
And, then, there’s the children. More than five million — and counting — who will benefit the most.
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
