Can Maine reform its Solitary Confinement Policies?
New!Listen to several hours of supporters and opponents of LD 1611 "An Act To Ensure Humane Treatment for Special Management Prisoners", speaking February 17, 2010 before the Maine Legislature's Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.

Media Coverage of LD 1611 The bill is sponsored by Representative James Schatz of Blue Hill, and cosponsored by Representative BERRY of Bowdoinham, Senator GERZOFSKY of Cumberland, Representative HINCK of Portland,Representative LAJOIE of Lewiston, Senator MARRACHÉ of Kennebec, Representative MITCHELL of the Penobscot Nation, Speaker PINGREE of North Haven, Representative PIOTTI of Unity and Representative WAGNER of Lewiston.

Maine Civil Liberties Union's two page summary on why passing LD 1611 is important. * * * Media Coverage of the bill.
GET INVOLVED! Learn more at the group Mainers against Abusive Solitary Confinement

EXILED INMATES. WRFR Community Radio Prison News reporter-inmate Deane Rowland Brown was exiled from the state of Maine in 2006 by now-disgraced former Maine State Prison Warden Jeffrey Merrill, after Brown exposed corruption and mismanagement at the prison to investigative journalists, forcing the prison to reform its prisoner punishment policies. (Scroll down this page for links to brown's activities as inmate correspondent.)

Browne, serving a lengthy burglary sentence for crimes committed in his native Maine, has no history of violence before or after incarceration. He was nonetheless exiled by ousted Warden Jeffrey Merrill, whodeclared him the "most dangerous man in Maine state prison".

Abruptly shipped from there to the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center in Baltimore, he languished in solitary confinement for a year before being transferred, again with litle warning, to the Western Correctional Institute in Cumberland, Maryland in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Now WRFR reporter Brown has been transferred again, this time to the Northbranch Correctional Institute , part of the same prison complex . Northbranch however, is designated Ultra Max (the highest security rating). It is a new "worst of the worst" facility, ostensibly there to isolate gang leaders and those who assault guards / other inmates. (Since being moved there, Brown has already been assaulted).

How a non violent inmate from Maine has come to be dumped into a "worst of the worst" hellhole like that defies understanding. Write him:

Deane Brown #339-621
Northbranch Correctional Institute
14100 McMullen Highway S.W.
Cumberland, MD 21502

Maine State Prison investigated by OPEGA - Read June 2009 report here (6 pg pdf)

Maine Speaker of the House defied by Corrections Commissioner over state's "Punitive Exile" policy. Listen to a reading of the names of 21 exiled Mainers in the Maine Hall of Flags. (short MP3)

During the Baldacci administration, Mainer inmates are being spirited off to distant states' prisons, as punishment for rocking the Maine Corrections boat about poor prison conditions and/or institutional corruption. Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree, above, and other legislators have been rebuffed by Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson, who told them the rationales for his more than 20 exiling decisions are "confidential".

Case# 1. The Exiling of Deane Rowland Brown: Maine prison inmate Deane Rowland Brown was exiled as a political prisoner to a Maryland high security prison in retaliation for his investigative reporting on WRFR FM Community Radio and with Portland Phoenix writer Lance Tapley about what even prison guards considered a failing, corrupted regime rife with nepotism and favoritism under Commissioner Magnusson. *** Brown also served as a writer correspondent to WRFR from May to November 2005

Write Deane in exile: Deane R. Brown #339621, Western Correctional Institution 13800 McMullen Highway, S.W.,Cumberland, Maryland 21502 ....Read Brown's blog on his 6 months in Maine Supermax

April 5, 2008 update. Brown files motion for preliminary injunction in federal court in Bangor. Charges violations of right due Maine prisoners.

January 31, 2008 Update.Deane is STILL in solitary confinement at MCAC, reported sighting in a Maine prison were not substantiated. Concern continues of potential transfer to a remote gang-infested prison in the distant western Maryland Panhandle. Maryland's new Siberia for state prisons. Why was the security rating of this man abruptly heightened, making him eligible for transfer into this literally worst of the worst facility? Tapley on Mass Torture in America (including Maine)

September 2007 Update 9/26/07: Writer Lance Tapley excoriates Baldacci Administration for willfully ducking responsibility for human rights violations in Brown's Maryland prison cell.
9/12/07. Prison Rewards exiled hero-inmate with a stab in the back!
9/6/07Governor Baldacci's legal counsel Karla Black replies to WRFR letter of 8/29/07

August 2007 update: 8/29/07 Letter to Governor Baldacci from WRFR news producer Ron Huber

Deane's lawyer Lynne Williams interviewed 8/18/07 (15 minute mp3) about Deane's federal lawsuit challenging his censoring and exile.

Listen to Deane Brown's Reports on MP3 <

LETTERS
To and from WRFR and Prison officials.

From Exile
August 14, 2007. "This place has reclassified me from medium custody to maximum, meaning that I belong and must be kept with the absolute worst of the worst. But why? To shut me up and to punish me,that's why. "

June 17, 2007 "There are so many people supporting me to win this battle --so many who will see a better day if I win..."