February 5, 2026 | Incarcerated Mainers can get college degrees, earn wages through remote work and vote. There’s universal access to medication for opioid use disorder in the state’s prisons, along with mental health services, collaborations with victim service organizations and reimagined living spaces to support rehabilitation. 

These opportunities for personal growth helped establish the “Maine Model of Corrections” as one of the country’s most restorative programs, with a revised mission to make communities safer by helping incarcerated people transform their lives. 

“But then, to what end?” asked Brandon Brown, who does criminal legal reform work and who once was incarcerated. 

Brown is among those — including current and formerly incarcerated people, lawmakers and criminal justice advocates — who are pushing for Maine to reinstate parole, a conditional early release the state abolished roughly 50 years ago. Maine was the first state to do so and one of 16 that remains without such a system today. 

January 8, 2026 | If prisons made us safer, the United States would be the safest country in the world. Instead, we have the largest incarcerated population on the planet — and we are not safer for it.

Maine abolished parole in 1976, becoming the first state to do so. Sixteen others followed. As a result, average prison sentences here increased by roughly 20%, making Maine one of the harshest sentencing states in the nation. Today, our prison population is more than three times larger than it was in 1976, and it is aging rapidly.

January 5, 2026 | The state does not allow prisoners to earn an earlier release date through education, employment, and self-improvement.