Sheriff Kevin Joyce outside the Cumberland County Jail in February 2022. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer, file

Federal inmates are once again being held at the Cumberland County Jail after a two-year pause, but no one at the facility is excited about it.

The jail lost its lucrative contract with the U.S. Marshals Service in 2022 because of staffing shortages and other services the federal government found lacking at the facility.

The loss of funding put the county’s annual budget for the jail in the red, Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said in a recent interview. Doing business with the Marshals Service is a crucial part of the jail’s funding model, he said.

“The only reason we have a contract with the Marshals is that we’re convenient and they’re willing to pay for that convenience,” Joyce said, referring to the jail’s proximity to the federal court house in Portland. “And paying for that convenience helps the taxpayers so they don’t have to pay so much for the jail, (which is) becoming increasingly expensive.”

The return of federal inmates will bring in nearly $2 million, according to the county’s adopted budget for 2024-25.

But bringing the contract back comes at a cost for correctional workers, who say they already were struggling with the workload.

The National Correctional Employees Union, which represents most of the jail’s workers, filed a complaint with the state’s labor relations board a few weeks ago, alleging that the county’s reinstatement of federal inmates unfairly puts pressure on the workers. Joyce is already facing pressure from the union, which wants him removed from office.

“The rank-and-file membership that the NCEU represents is really frustrated with the sheriff’s department and the county for going ahead with this and really balancing their budget woes on the backs of employees,” said Bill Doyle, the union’s executive director.

As of Tuesday, Joyce said the facility was holding 14 inmates from the U.S. Marshals Service and 11 from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The contract sets aside 86 beds for men and 10 for women. If the jail was to fulfill that estimate for a full year, it would make about $5.6 million.

Joyce said keeping inmate numbers low would be ideal for his staff, but allowing federal inmates back in the facility was the best fix to the almost $1 million deficit in the jail budget. Renewing the contract will balance the budget by June 2025, he said.

“Jail is one of these things that everybody wants to use, nobody wants to pay for it,” Joyce said. “It just becomes one of those areas where you’re just constantly making changes to make everyone happy, realizing you’re probably not making a lot of people happy.”

A significant portion of the jail’s budget relies on the federal dollars. The Cumberland County Jail is expected to spend $20.9 million in the current budget year, almost $16 million of which will be funded through taxes, according to the county’s adopted budget. State funding is expected to cover about $3 million, while the federal contract was estimated to bring in $1.7 million.

DETAILS OF THE CONTRACT

The Cumberland County Commissioners, a body of five elected members, voted to approve the new contract at their meeting in April. The county manager, James Gailey, said at the time that the new agreement promised a slight increase in the rate paid to the jail: $150 per inmate per day, a $20 bump from the agreement last signed in 2010.

The federal prisoners held at the Cumberland County Jail are detained on federal charges or by federal court orders. Joyce said most federal inmates are there awaiting trials. If convicted, most are transported to New Hampshire. The men in federal custody are separated from those in state custody, while the women are not.

The contract was pulled in September 2022, after the Marshals Service found jail staffing insufficient, and later that month, Joyce closed the jail to most intake because of staffing shortages.

Since it lost the contract, the jail has added about 10 staff members and improved some services at the request of the Marshals Service, Joyce said. As of March, the facility employed a total of 86 corrections officers, 12 sergeants, seven lieutenants, two captains and one major, according to a note Joyce wrote in the county’s annual budget report.

The U.S. Marshals Service also identified several areas Joyce needed to improve before allowing federal inmates to go back, such as more access to outdoor recreation activities and clear polices laid out for inmate resources, like accessing the law library and grievance processes.

After jail administrators addressed those issues, the inmates were brought back in last month, Joyce said.

‘IT COULD GET SOMEONE SERIOUSLY HURT’

But according to the union, the correctional officers still feel the stress of staffing shortages.

Doyle, of the National Correctional Employees Union, said jail staff are forced to work overtime to make up for the vacant positions.

“The fact of the matter is, adding inmates to an already stressful environment is problematic, and it could get somebody seriously hurt,” Doyle said.

Joyce said the 10 extra positions make the jail “marginally covered” in terms of staff. It currently has about 63 vacancies, but only 18 of those are funded. Joyce said aspiring corrections officers aren’t easy to come by, so even filling the 18 spots will be difficult.

“In the world of criminal justice, which includes corrections, it used to be 300 candidates for one position,” Joyce said. “Now you have one candidate for 300 positions.”

The union’s complaint against the county, filed by NCEU labor representative Giovanna Peruzzi, also alleges that by bringing federal inmates back, the jail violated the collective bargaining agreement and “unilaterally” changed the staff’s conditions of employment. The union is now asking the jail to rescind the contract and bargain in good faith with a representative.

In May, Peruzzi asked Cumberland County administrators to reopen the bargaining agreement and negotiate a wage increase, but was turned down without reason, according to the complaint. During the last week of June, Peruzzi asked the county to start negotiations again, but the complaint said she did not hear back until 15 working days later – a violation of Maine law, which requires a response within 10 days.

The complaint awaits review from the Maine Labor Relations Board, the entity responsible for governing the collective bargaining of public employees. The board’s executive director, Neil Daly, said Gailey, the county manager, has until Monday to respond. From there, Daly will decide if the complaint is sufficient and, if so, schedule a hearing. Gailey said the county would respond to the complaint at an “upcoming hearing.” He declined a request for an interview and said the county will not be commenting further.