America’s mass incarceration problem has disastrous consequences for all of us. There is of course the incredible fiscal cost of incarcerating one quarter of the world’s prisoners – federal spending on incarceration is estimated at $80 billion a year. That’s $80 billion we could be spending on education, hospitals, and programs that would prevent criminal activity in the first place.

But far worse than the fiscal cost is, of course, the human cost. Mass incarceration is an utter failure as a public policy – it devastates individuals, families, and communities; has a disproportionate impact on communities of color and poor people; and has failed to produce a proportional increase in public safety.

At the heart of the problem is our failed war on drugs – the number one driver of our incarceration crisis both in Maine and nationwide. For the last several decades, drug arrests have skyrocketed, and the vast majority have been for low-level possesion charges.

Yet the uptick in drug arrests has done little or nothing to curb drug use – as we have seen here at home, where we hear almost daily of more drug overdose deaths.

Spending millions on more drug law enforcement may put more people in jail, but if we continue to cut funding for treatment programs, we fail to address the heart of the addiction problem. This is first and foremost a public health issue and should be treated as such.

That is why we are urging Maine’s senators to co-sponsor and support the federalSentencing Reform and Corrections Act. The SRCA will fix some of the federal policies and laws that have contributed to the growing federal prison population and the racial disparities in the system. It strikes a balance that allows us to maintain and even increase public safety, while creating a system that is more fair and justice.

We are thankful to Senators Collins and King for their recent attention to the drug crisis in Maine – including the announcement earlier this month that Maine health centers will receive over $1 million to help fight opiate addiction.

We also note the senators’ support of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which would amend the Higher Education Act to stop asking students about past drug convictions in order to determine eligibility for financial aid.

Currently, we have a system that works against people who are struggling with addiction, by placing far too many barriers to recovery in their way. Longer sentences, barriers to jobs and education, and separation from community and  family are not the answer. If we truly want to heal our community, it’s time for a new approach.

The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act is one important step toward addressing our nation’s deeply flawed criminal justice system.

Poor people should never be locked up for being unable to pay their legal debts. Putting someone in jail for failure to pay a fine creates a two-tiered justice system where poor people are punished more harshly than people who can afford to pay their fines. Doing so is unconstitutional and a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, yet several states – including Maine – still rely on this system of de facto debtors’ prisons.

We at the ACLU of Maine began looking into debtors’ prisons in Maine over a year ago. Our study into the number of people being held in jail because they are too poor to pay their fines led this article in the Portland Press Herald. The Bangor Daily News and thePress Herald also ran excellent editorials calling for an end to this draconian practice.

We also worked with Rep. Dion (D-Portland) to introduce legislation that would have outlawed the incarceration of people for being too poor to pay. That bill was ultimately tabled, but it helped lead to the creation of a task force to study pretrial conditions in Maine’s jails. I was honored to be appointed to the Pretrial Justice Reform Taskforce, which was convened by Maine Chief Justice Leigh Saufley with the support of Gov. LePage and bipartisan legislative leadership.

The task force studied Maine’s pretrial system, with a goal of making recommendations to lessen the human and financial cost of keeping so many people in jail who simply don’t need to be there.

Earlier this year, we released our recommendations. In addition to taking on fines, the recommendations also address another piece of the puzzle responsible for ballooning jail populations: the broken bail system. 

As we wrote last year, “in Maine, decisions about pre-trial release often do not take into account a person’s ability to pay. A 2011 report by the Maine Center for Public Reporting revealed that decisions about cash bail amounts, made initially by bail commissioners, are unofficially pre-set in some counties and in others are based on the amount of the fine a person will have to pay if convicted. As a result, every day hundreds of Mainers who have not been convicted of any crime languish in our jails - not because they are a flight risk or a threat to community safety, but because they are too poor to pay.”

Now the Maine Legislature can take a meaningful step toward tackling the misuse of fines and bail to keep people in jail unnecessarily, by passing LD 1639. This bill, introduced by Senator Burns (R-Whiting), would implement the recommendations of the task force.

It is well-known by now that America is the world’s biggest jailer, and locking people up who simply don’t belong there is a big reason for that. LD 1639 is a meaningful step toward ending mass incarceration in Maine.

(updated with a link to the Bangor Daily News editorial)