Our History
Humble Beginnings
On June 9th, 2017, five men in a small, dark second-floor office with the dream of coming together to make reentry resources and mentorship available to citizens returning from Maine’s prisons and jails. Their presence was the result of a persistent question from a Catholic Charities volunteer named Bruce Noddin. Bruce was a member of the delegation from Catholic Charities going into the Androscoggin County Jail on Thursday Nights for bible study (a practice he continues to this day). He began to notice what so many in the justice system have become numb to - the fact that the same people seem to be released and rearrested with alarming frequency. The question he asked, after listening to their stories, was this: "What are we doing to help these people when they get out?"
The answer, of course, was "not much". And it wasn't just Catholic Charities giving that answer; although the Maine Department of Corrections does have personnel who try to help incarcerated citizens establish housing and employment, their attempts abruptly end on the person's release date. In practice, the state of Maine (like most states) usually releases incarcerated citizens who have finished their sentences (or occasionally, have been found innocent after being held at the jail for months awaiting trial) with nothing more than $50 gate money and a bus ticket to the town of their choosing, leaving the reentrant to fill any gaps in stability on their own. Bruce's colleagues at Catholic Charities, sensitive to the need, suggested that he start a conversation himself, and thus did the original five men gather to discuss what could be done differently.
At the second meeting, it was twenty-five people, men and women, determined to find a better path forward.
By the fourth meeting, it was clear that exclusively holding meetings in Auburn was limiting and several regional meetings of interested stakeholders began occurring throughout the state.
Entering the
Maine State Prison
Maine State Prison
In 2018, Bruce approached now-Commissioner Randall Liberty, who at the time was Warden of the Maine State Prison, with the idea of meeting people prior to release. Bruce's goal, which would later become the key tenet of MERN's mission, was to establish a network of supports and resources for returning Mainers to "land" on, in order to have a better chance at stabilizing in Maine's communities without returning to criminal behavior. He was initially joined by Peter Lehman (now-Legislative Liaison for the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition and a member of MERN's board of directors), Rob Porter (now-Contracts officer for the state's Office of Behavioral Health) and Keith Arvanitis (now-Coordinator of the Portland Community Support Center for Commonspace). All three men brought their own lived experience as formerly incarcerated individuals to Bruce's vision, and it quickly became obvious that these living success stories received a lot of traction with the residents of the prison, who were eager to hear how they had survived and thrived after their own incarcerations.
For slightly over a year, meetings with individuals occurred within the multipurpose rooms of the tiers themselves; literally the incarcerated citizens' living rooms. The meetings offered focus, SMART goals, and overall hope to people whose imminent freedom wasn't something to celebrate but rather a harbinger of homelessness, hunger and harrowed communities wary of the potential dangers they represented.
A New 501(c)(3) Nonprofit
In March of 2019, the Maine Prisoner Re-Entry Network formally applied for nonprofit status, and it was approved in December of that year. This allowed what was once an all-volunteer organization with few internal resources to apply for grants and contracts that would allow us to expand our reach and bring our approach further than it had gone before. We began to host our "Ready 4 Reentry" training series, recruiting community volunteers to help sponsor returning citizens upon their release.
In coordination with Maine's Office of Behavioral Health, we conceived of a pilot program to bring lived experience into the Kennebec County Correctional Facility and the Kennebec County treatment court, in order to divert justice-involved individuals away from prison before they arrived there. On the strength of that contract, the board of directors formally voted to extend a paid position to Bruce Noddin as Executive Director of the organization. Just as we were about to begin, global events changed the nature of our work forever...
The Covid-19 Pandemic
When everything started locking down, our regional stakeholder meetings consolidated into a Weekly Statewide Meeting over Zoom - a practice that continues to this day. We also needed to adapt our prison intervention program to accomodate the inability to physically enter the facility.
Graciously, the Maine Department of Corrections agreed to allow us to continue our mission through Zoom meetings with incarcerated individuals and their Correctional Care and Treatment Workers - the caseworkers at the facilities who help prepare them for release. At first, this seemed like a barely adequate substitute for personal connections we were able to make with people in their home environment. However, as the program progressed, we discovered several essential benefits, including better coordination with the caseworkers to prevent duplication of effort and, most crucially, introductions to third-party community resources that would never have been feasible before. A resource in Aroostook County, for example, would have had to drive over six hours to get to the Maine State Prison and would have to be cleared for entrance into the facility. Zoom meetings, however, simply mean clicking a link from their home location, and suddenly a person returning to Aroostook County can become a visible face and voice rather than simply an abstract concept. This also allowed us to follow along with residents as they became eligible for programming and transferred to other MDOC facilities. We have now had clients in every MDOC facility in the state.
MERN Earns Funding
During the pandemic, we applied for and received a Second Chance Act grant from the United States Department of Justice through its Bureau of Justice Assistance. This allowed us to hire more individuals with lived experience to connect with people and provide them with transportation on their day of release. The initial three-year grant ended on September 30th, 2024; during the grant period, we met with more than twice the number of people we promised to and obtained a number of demonstrably good outcomes for both returning citizens and Maine communities.
Entering the Court System
Our Kennebec County pilot was ultimately a success, and continues to be renewed into the present. Seperately, Maine's Administrative Office of the Courts wrote us in as a subawardee for treatment court initiatives in Franklin, Oxford, Sagadahoc, Lincoln, Knox and Waldo counties. We were invited to help design a standardization program for Peer Recovery Support professionals in conjunction with the state, and we unveiled it at the Governor's Sixth Annual Opioid Response Summit in July of 2024. A generous donation from Charles Schwab Charitable allowed us to also provide our services within the Androscoggin County Treatment Court and to St. Francis House in Lewiston.
The peer support model has been so effective in treatment court settings that we have recently been invited to pilot the approach in Family Recovery Court for those attempting to regain custody of their children after experiencing difficulties with parenting. These courts function in Lewiston, Augusta and Bangor. We hired a team of people who had lived experience with their own children to provide support and guidance to parents going through the process. So far the attempt seems to be going very well.
MERN In The Present
Rapid growth is a dangerous prospect for a business; growing too much, too fast can cause things to get out of hand and overwhelm even the best and most vigilant of teams. MERN is currently going through this business adolescence; we have begun to formalize and proceduralize a lot of our previous grassroots efforts. This process requires vigilance and determination. Our first big step was the development of a Peer Recovery Support manual in conjunction with the State of Maine, unveiled at the Governor's 6th Annual Opioid Summit.
We have also recognized that our mission cannot fully succeed on grants and contracts alone, which are often earmarked in ways that don't allow them to be used for the most significant part of the work: helping to stabilize returning citizens. Our first major fundraising effort, FABLES of Maine, is an attempt to raise the extra funds to bring to bear on that part of the work...