Stan Moody

POB 240
Manchester, ME 04351
207/626-0594
www.stanmoody.com

Stan Moody of Manchester, ME, former Maine State Representative and most recently a Chaplain at
Maine State Prison in Warren, is advocating for transparency and accountability in Maine’s prison
system…A prolific and published writer, Dr. Moody is pastor of the Meeting House Church in
Manchester and has been a speaker on human rights issues at conferences around the nation…

Community Leaders Rally to Ex-Con

As the per-prisoner cost of incarceration inches toward $50,000 a year, and
as Maine’s 21 prisons and jails fill with non-violent offenders, there has to be
another option. In the last week of December, 2010, a District Attorney, a
Probation Officer, a Defense Attorney and a Pastor got together and saved the
State $200,000.
Jason Thomas had violated his probation for drug possession and was in
danger of being sent back to Maine State Prison until District Attorney Evert
Fowle, Probation Officer Roy Gutfinski, Defense Attorney Walter McKee and
Rev. Stan Moody, a prison reform advocate and former prison chaplain, put their
heads together to come up with a suitable alternative. Thomas accepted a plea of 6-
months, including a term in Kennebec County Sheriff Randal Liberty’s new KERA
residency program for re-entry and substance abuse counseling.
“I credit District Attorney Fowle with putting this package together for
Jason,” Moody says. “Despite the fact that Jason had disappointed him a number of
times in the past, Evert was big enough to give it another try. Walter McKee got
involved and handled the case pro bono. I will be interfacing with the Sheriff’s
Department soon, and it will be up to Jason to make it stick.”
For his role, DA Fowle had this to say: “Repeated incarcerations for Jason
Thomas have not proven effective in changing his behavior.  There is no guarantee
that this approach will either, but it was certainly worth a try, particularly with
everyone stepping forward to offer Thomas a comprehensive opportunity to climb
off the criminal justice treadmill.   If he doesn’t take advantage of this
extraordinary opportunity, we can always send him back to prison.” 
Atty. McKee stated, “I am pleased that Jason is being given a chance to
succeed and the tools to do so, something that is increasingly difficult in these tight
economic times,” while Officer Gutfinski said, “Jason is an industrious and
intelligent young man.  We all hope he uses these talents to his betterment and
rejects those tendencies which have caused him problems.”

Prison Reform, www.stanmoody.com, Maine Department of Corrections

 Thomas has had an interesting experience with the Maine prison system.
Moody found him in segregation (solitary confinement) in 2009 after he had been
expelled from the drug rehabilitation program at Maine Correctional Center in
Windham. After Thomas was released, he looked Moody up and painted his truck
for him. “I saw potential in Jason,” Moody says. “He was building a relationship
with his 7-year old son, and he did a good job with my truck. It seemed to me that
Jason was the kind of ex-offender that the community ought to rally around to
help.”
As Moody became more familiar with Thomas’s background, he became
alarmed over what he learned. Thomas had no sooner enrolled in the drug
rehabilitation program at Windham then he was hit on by a female drug counselor
who has since been dismissed, but not until 5-months after Thomas was expelled
from the program. The counselor, who worked weekends, gave Thomas an illegal
cell phone and charger for him to contact her and orchestrated clandestine
opportunities to meet. While bringing contraband into the prison is a felony, she
was never prosecuted.
Prison administration attempted to get Thomas to implicate the counselor,
but in the tradition of prison protocol, he refused to “rat her out” so was
handcuffed and sent back to segregation at Warren within 4 weeks. Moody has in
his possession some 30 love letters from the drug counselor to Thomas.
“In my experience with the prison system in Maine, I have found that the
currency of choice within the system is sex and drugs,” Moody says. “What kind
of criminal justice system will sentence a person to prison only to have him or her
subjected to the same kind of life they were living on the streets?” he asks. “Those
letters were sent to Thomas through the mail system at Maine State Prison under a
pseudonym from a variety of different addresses. Several of them were graphically
pornographic.”
The Department of Corrections has an official policy of zero tolerance for
sex, a policy that Moody sees as unrealistic in an environment of young adults with
raging hormones. “As to a suitable alternative, I haven’t the slightest idea. That’s
beyond my pay scale!”
Thomas, who has a lot of support on the outside, is getting a better chance
than he would get inside the State Prison at a fraction of the cost and is finally
getting the substance abuse counseling he needs. Moody will be working to line
him up with job training, and hopefully the community effort will pay off in the
long run for Thomas and the State of Maine.

Prison Reform, www.stanmoody.com, Maine Department of Corrections