Comment by frob

As someone actively working in this space, I can tell you they are. Maine is following the so-called Scandinavian Model. It essentially comes down to giving incarcerated people a chance to practice normal daily activities and social interactions. The facilities feel more like highly secure dorms than jails. The way a head of a different DoC said still sticks with me:

We send people away for years, tell them exactly what to do every day and they get to make exacrly one choice every day: do you obey or not? That's the only choice you get to make. Then, after 3, 5, 10 years, we send them out into society and tell them, "Make better choices." But we haven't prepared them for that at all. We have given them almost no chances to make decisions and learn how to make good ones. We just tell them the decision to make and they do it. There's no space for practicing good decisions in traditional prison settings.

Multiple other states are pointing to Maine as proof that the Scandinavian model can work in the US and are incorporating their learnings into their plans and trainings.