About Us
MPAC is a statewide group formed in 2007 to improve conditions for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, their families, survivors of harm, and others impacted by the criminal legal system.
Our coalition members include, most importantly, those directly affected by the system and their loved ones, as well as community partner organizations known for their strong commitment to human rights, such as the NAACP, ACLU, NAMI, Maine Council of Churches, and MERN, along with individuals dedicated to social justice and the humane treatment of all people.
Our Work
Director’s Monthly Updates
Read monthly updates from our Executive Director, Joseph Jackson.
Direct Advocacy
Direct Advocacy is a program designed to identify policies and practices that adversely impact confined citizens and their families. Our response team, that includes system impacted citizens, receives and responds to complaints from confined citizens and their families through the mail or other types of communication platforms. The response team meets with executive leadership to report whether a complaint meets the criteria for group intervention. When a complaint meets eligibility requirements, the Response Team and Directors establish dialogue with prison officials to reform or rescind a policy or practice.
Public Education
MPAC has a Speakers Bureau comprised of staff, members, and volunteers dedicated to public education, i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Interviews, Opeds, LTE, Panels, Conferences, Colleges, and Churches. Lean more about the Speakers Bureau in this PDF.
Organized Policy Actions
MPAC has a dedicated team of staff, members, and volunteers monitoring, proposing, and organizing constituents around Administrative Rule Making.
Support
MPAC connects returning citizens and family to recovery, employment, housing, peer support resources throughout Maine
Organized Legislative Actions
MPAC has a dedicated team of staff, members, and volunteers monitoring, tracking and organizing constituents around criminal justice legislation.
Who We Are
MPAC Staff
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Mr. Joseph Jackson was convicted in 1995 of manslaughter and sentenced to Maine Department of Corrections (MDOC) where he served nineteen years. As a prisoner, Mr. Jackson completed Literacy Volunteer Training; PEER Education; and Work Ready Alternatives to Violence, One, Two, and Three. He is a founder of the Maine State Prison chapter of the NAACP and served on its Executive Committee in several capacities from 2003-2012.
While incarcerated, Joseph earned his Associate’s and Bachelor’s degrees with summa cum laude honors from the University of Southern Maine in Augusta. Later that year, he was selected as a member of Who's Who among students in colleges and universities in 2012. He became the first prisoner in Maine to be selected to the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA in the Creative Writing graduate program while still a prisoner, and represented alums of the University of Southern Maine in Augusta’s 50 Years 50 Portraits for their 50th anniversary in 2015. In addition, he earned his Master’s Degree from the University of Southern Maine in 2015, and was one of four commencement speakers for his class.
Joseph has published poetry in the online news journal Village Soup, and his poetry is featured in Portland’s and Bangor’s NAACP Martin Luther King breakfast catalogs from 2005-2012. His poem “Brighter Days” was published in the UMA Scholar in 2012, and his poetry was featured in the Bangor Daily News in 2014. In January of 2016, he released his master’s thesis Black In Maine to the world. A digital copy can be found at https://usm.maine.edu/library.
In addition to his role with MPAC, Joseph is the Advocacy Director with Maine Inside Out (MIO). MIO builds community, develops youth leadership, and initiates dialogue through the use of collaborative original theater, working across boundaries, both inside and outside of Long Creek Youth Development Center. Simultaneously, his work with the Reentry Center in Belfast with incarcerated citizens, led to the co-founding of Restorative Art Works (RAW) in Belfast. RAW creates original theater as therapy to address the post traumatic stress of incarceration.
Joseph has experienced many successes during his decade plus work as a prison advocate: revoking, revising, or defeating proposed MDOC policies and practices. He has established a good working relationship with MDOC and can enter any facility to meet with a prisoner or department head. Joseph has established relationships in Augusta with members of both parties, and is now a member of Maine’s Juvenile Justice assessment Task Force. He has coordinated the planning and implementation of several campaigns: Notably on phone rates, pen pals, solitary confinement, monetary sanctions, and prison health care. He has overseen the proposing, pushing and enacting of many pieces of legislation.
Joseph has organized and mobilized MPAC's base by establishing bimonthly community meetings in various locations throughout the state: These meetings are used to strategically plan, implement, and reflect upon our advocacy efforts. As Director, he coordinates the management of media platforms to further engage the public, and his efforts have raised MPAC's visibility beyond the borders of Maine, both nationally and internationally, with his appearance in December 2018, in the British publication, The Guardian.
Under Joseph’s leadership, MPAC has grown in capacity from a fledgling organization constantly flirting in the red, to solidly in the black for six consecutive years. He has established relationships with donors throughout Maine, and by working closely with our finance committee on grants, and other fundraising efforts, MPAC is in the midst of experiencing fiscal growth.
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Joelle (she/her) began volunteering with MPAC seven years ago as Assistant Grant Writer, and is now the Administrative Assistant and lead Grant Writer: she takes care of those behind-the-scenes office tasks, engages in written correspondence with community members on the inside, and helps raise the money that supports MPAC’s work. Joelle is also a Multi Language Learner Teacher in Lewiston, with a goal of quashing the school-to-prison pipeline.
Joelle earned an MS from the University of San Francisco, and an MA from the University of Maine. Along her journey, she taught in Mexico and Texas, and picked up Spanish along the way. She loves to dance to old-school Salsa, especially Colombian, read a good mystery, and tend to her flower garden.
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Retired HS Science teacher and blueberry farmer, Jan became involved with criminal justice reform when her son was incarcerated in 2012. Since then she has served on the Board of Visitors for Franklin County Jail, acts as MPACs liaison with the prison branch of the NAACP, and regularly testifies before the legislature on issues related to criminal justice reform.
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Peter Lehman, PhD, is MPAC’s Legislative Coordinator. He is a person in long-term recovery who taught sociology and criminology at USM until being incarcerated for a six-year sentence at the old prison in Thomaston and at Bolduc. He was released in 2003.
While at Bolduc Correctional Facility he was active tutoring students, acting as inmate advocate, doing the flower gardening, pursuing his own education and recovery, and working for the substance abuse department. He completed seven University courses on addiction and counseling. He also developed and taught an intensive six-week course for residents dealing with addiction, recovery, and relapse.
Since then, Dr. Lehman has been active in the recovery community, has helped develop reentry support programs and initiatives, and is a founding member of MPAC. He has been a presence on corrections and other criminal justice issues in the legislature since 2005 as well as providing input and critiques of Department of Corrections policies. Currently, he is also active with the Maine Prisoner Re-Entry Network and serves on its Board.
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Brandon Brown is a second year PhD student at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution; both his research and his studies focus on the ways that narratives shape the experience of conflict, and how systems and structures shape narratives.
Brandon’s journey into advocacy, activism, and academia all started in the same place--as a young man sentenced to 17 years in prison, he discovered the gift of education thanks to Doris Buffett and her Sunshine Lady Foundation. Immersing himself in education as a young, incarcerated man, he began to see the world in a different way—a newfound understanding of the injustice of American history helped shape his desire to be in the fight for more just, more equitable, and more peaceful systems in this country. The first step in this work was finding positive ways to contribute to his community: among other roles, Brandon served his incarcerated peers as a hospice volunteer, yoga teacher, mentor, tutor, peer facilitator, a board member and the president of the MSP chapter of the NAACP. Brandon sought out every possible opportunity to make his environment better than how he found it, and transitioning back into the community, he remains dedicated to continuing that work on both sides of the walls.
Education has become a passion for Brandon. The liberating quality of learning was a profound thing that he discovered while incarcerated; Brandon was able to earn both his AA and BA while in prison, and even became the first incarcerated person in Maine to earn a graduate degree while in custody. Going on to enroll in his doctoral program while at the Bolduc Correctional Facility, Brandon has remained dedicated to blazing a trail for other hungry learners to follow. His experience with the criminal justice system serves as the continuing fuel for his advocacy and activism, whether it be in policy and legislative reform efforts, advocating for improved systems and networks for recovery and reentry, or working for Maine’s system impacted youth, Brandon continues to push forward to create a more just and healing-centered system for addressing crime and harm.
July 7, 1967 — January 6, 2023
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With 30+ years of incarceration at the Maine State Prison, Robert (known to many as Paco), has been impacted by many traumatic experiences from his history behind bars.
Yet while locked up Paco was given the opportunity to learn about his own talents and used them to not only provide hospice care to his dying peers, but also to help create a music cd and to acquire both his associate's and bachelor's degrees from the University of Maine @ Augusta.
Upon his release from incarceration in 2020, Paco reconnected with Joseph Jackson (Executive Director of MPAC), and has since become a project coordinator within the organization.
Paco has been a part of multiple films focused on the plight of those who are serving time in Maine's prison system, and is a passionate speaker on their behalf, as well as an authentic voice about the challenges of reintegration into society as it exists now.
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Andre “Dray” Hicks is a social entrepreneur, mentor and national performance artist who has recorded with Kool G. Rap and toured with Yeti. Andre is a Deering High School alumni student athlete, lives in Portland with his family and is the longstanding manager of Toni’s Touch, the cornerstone barbershop and salon in the Portland community. Andre is a 2022 American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, co-designing curriculum on the themes of accountability, forgiveness, liberation and healing. Building upon his lived experience in the justice system as a youth and adult, he works as a mentor to young people and adults with the Opportunity Scholars Initiative at the University of Southern Maine. Andre facilitates weekly groups of currently and formerly incarcerated people to build positive reentry support and works to create opportunities for people to aspire to greatness and thrive. He uses the tools of writing, conversation, and performance art to facilitate justice as healing and liberation and mentors’ youth in financial literacy and wellbeing.
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Ms. George is a skillful, innovative, dedicated scholar and thought partner from Brooklyn, NY. She resides in Maine, where she is incarcerated. Darlene George Holds her BA in Psychology and Forensic Psychology, Darlene is an Grants Manager for a Health Facility in Maine, a Recovery Coach for over a Decade, Ms. George facilitates humanities courses with other incarcerated women and the public, titled Finding and Connecting Your Roots and Floetry. Darlene is a Board Member of the College Guild that serves the population of individuals that does not have access to College. Darlene is also an active member of Maine Prisoners Advocacy Coalition. Darlene is an Opportunity Scholar and a Facilitator for the Right/Write to heal Creative Writing group. Darlene Facilitates classes for Colby College (Freedom and Captivity) for outside organizations, Journeys of trauma healing and forgiveness, Loss, Repair, and Transformation, and What is liberation.
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MPAC Coordinator Antonio “Cuba” Jackson is an abolitionist, civic leader, and
Entrepreneur. After spending nearly a decade in Maine’s prison system, Antonio joined MPAC and committed himself to the work of ensuring the ethical treatment of incarcerated individuals in our state.
While incarcerated Antonio served on the Executive Committee of the Maine State Prison branch of the NAACP as Vice president from 2013 - 2016.
Antonio earned an associates degree (magna cum laude) in Liberal Studies from the University of Maine at Augusta. A Bachelors of Arts from the Louisiana Baptist University.
Antonio is the owner and founder of 3T Builders and Renovators. His company is a full-scale general contractor. They offer new construction and renovations for customers throughout Maine. The company's goal is to ensure system-impacted individuals have access to work, and training in a skilled trade. They offer employment and competitive wages without regard to criminal history.
As MPAC Coordinator Antonio has dived into the supporting reentry transition for system impacted individuals. He is a spokesperson for MPAC and engages in strategic partnerships with the Maine Humanities Council and the Freedom and Captivity Project.
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My name is Santanu Basu also referred to as “Sammy”. I am a first-generation immigrant who came from India in 1972. I grew up and attended schools in Maryland. Graduating from Univ. of Maryland in 1988 and then went on into the United States Navy for a total of 11 years of service (5 years active duty and 6 years active reserve). Following my military days, my family relocated to Maine and I entered the civilian world as a self-employed person helping small-business owners. Eventually, having a business partner, I helped run a successful agency in Property & Casualty Insurances and Financial Services.
During my incarceration, for several years I served the MSP community by being on leadership teams of civic groups (Chairman of the Long-Timers Group & Vice President of the MSP-NAACP branch) – Then a truly wonderful and transformative program found me. For 13 years I took care of numerous dying men and a woman through the hospice volunteer program established by the Maine Hospice Council. While helping people with palliative care as well as end-of-life care, I found a “calling” to offer compassion, dignity and quality of life to those in their time of vulnerability. Respecting and caring for life, have been surges of speechless passion.
Currently, I am working for the Prison’s Programming department as the programs clerk. I am a graduate of the Prison Fellowship Academy. Additionally, through the Maine Humanities Council I facilitate discussions for the Veteran community, circulating around mental health awareness. Finally, I am a graduate of the Liberation Institute and a certified yoga instructor, enabling me to facilitate yoga classes throughout the prison.
It was during COVID-19, that I decided to dedicate my time while incarcerated on my personal transformation (body and mind), while awakening my soul. I discovered as mentioned earlier, one of my life’s new goals – being the best version of me that I can. That journey and transformative process has led me toward pursuing a master’s degree in yoga. Most recently, I joined the MPAC organization as their MSP-MPAC coordinator.
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Linda Small is a Project Coordinator for Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition. She is the founder and executive director of Reentry Sisters, a reentry support organization specializing in a gender-responsive and trauma-informed approach for women. She began her college journey while incarcerated. Now living a successful reentry life, she understands the transformational power of education.
She is the first woman in Maine, under the Second Chance Pell program, to apply to graduate school, holding a Master of Science in Adult and Higher Education and a graduate fellow from Columbia University’s Women’s Leadership. Linda is passionate about advocating for equitable access to higher education, jobs, and housing for system-impacted people and serves as a PI for an NEH collaborative research grant with the World Peace Foundation on Countering the Criminalization of Care, She is a lead for the Opportunity Scholars Network, which promotes formerly and currently incarcerated students to achieve their educational goals, and a DJ for Justice Radio, a talk show on WMPG and WERU about the carceral state.
MPAC Board
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Rosalani Moore is the Assistant Director of HOME, Inc. where she works closely with disadvantaged families developing pathways out of poverty. Rosa has a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and certification as a Behavioral Health Professional as well as a Human Resources Certification from UMA. Rosa volunteers on a number of nonprofit boards and brings a mixture of nonprofit experience and lived experience to the MPAC board. Lived experience includes growing up in poverty, family members experiencing incarceration, foster parenting of siblings, and supporting family members experiencing mental health and substance use challenges. Rosa resides in Verona Island where she spends her free time dabbling in the arts such as pottery and painting as well as playing with her two labs.
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Thazra-Rosie Hylton (she/her) is a proud Jamaican-American woman born & raised in Maine. She has always had a passion for human rights, which has been strengthened by a lifetime of witnessing and experiencing injustices within her own family and community. She is also a family member of currently and formerly incarcerated individuals here in Maine. Thazra believes in the power of love, art, and empathy..and that all people can achieve their own greatness when provided with the correct support & guidance.
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Craig Williams of Sanford, Maine; Board member; Bronx, NY Native; Co-Founder of Photo Patch Foundation, UnlockAcademy & Field Organizer for the National Council.
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Reese Remington is a civic engagement and organizing leader with a strong track record of building people-powered movements and advancing community-driven change. With experience spanning advocacy, electoral organizing, and youth civic education, Reese specializes in developing strategic field programs, mobilizing diverse communities, and translating complex issues into accessible, values-based campaigns.
Reese has led large-scale voter engagement efforts, managed cross-sector partnerships, and coached emerging leaders to strengthen grassroots power. Her work is grounded in a deep commitment to equity, inclusion, and amplifying historically underrepresented voices—particularly across LGBTQ+ communities, young people, and Black communities.
Driven by both vision and execution, Reese brings a thoughtful, results-oriented approach to movement building. She is passionate about creating pathways for long-term civic participation and fostering spaces where communities can organize, lead, and thrive.
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Julian Rowand (he/they) is a Senior Director at Maine Initiatives, where he serves on the Leadership Team and directs the organization's Grants for Change Program, Outdoor Equity Fund, and Giving Project. Before joining Maine Initiatives, Julian's organizing focused on affordable cooperative housing in Maine and Washington, D.C., and prior to that, he was an artist/organizer in the Bay Area for many years. Most prominently, Julian was co-director of These Walls Speak, a multi-year participatory research and documentary project examining the politics of place, community resistance, and the power of artistic expression in the Mission District of San Francisco. They currently live in rural Maine, on unceded Wabanaki land and also serve as the Vice-Chair of the Maine Philanthropy Center Board of Directors. Julian is about us getting free.
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Ryun Anderson (she/her) lives in Southern Maine on Wabanaki land. She currently practices as a trauma therapist and community facilitator. She became part of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition while collaborating with people incarcerated at the Maine State Prison who are leaders in transformative justice practice and advocacy. She has served as a trainer, advocate, outdoor educator and collaborative change maker. Ryun holds an MSW from the University of Southern Maine and she is a PhD student in Leadership, Creativity and Sustainability with the University of Vermont, and is studying to become an interfaith chaplain with the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. In her current community work, she serves as the Co-Chair for the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition Board of Directors, a leadership circle member with the Tri-Town Equity and Inclusion Coalition, and a member of the Ecotherapy Collaborative of Maine. She is forever committed to the beautiful, messy, curious, compassionate practice of finding our way to working together well, and she believes in an ever unfolding capacity for change in people, communities and organizations. She cherishes deep connections with beloveds in her life, music, reading, cooking shows, and time outdoors.
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Carla Hunt, (she/her) lives on unceded Wabanaki land, currently known as Yarmouth, Maine. She is recently retired and actively involved in racial justice work in her community and across the state. As a Black mother of a young adult living in the US and a family member of a system impacted individual, she is acutely aware of the injustices of our criminal system and the ways in which it impacts her people. She believes that restorative justice is one of many ways forward in deconstructing broken, oppressive systems.
She coordinates housing efforts through Yarmouth Compassionate Housing Initiative, YCHI (now under the umbrella of the New Mainers Assistance Program – NMAP), serves on the board of Maine Initiatives, currently as Board President and is an educational facilitator for Wabanaki REACH. She recently worked for the Commissioner's Office with Maine DHHS in health equity programs coordinating social service support for those impacted by COVID across the state including those incarcerated.
While the US is home, Carla has spent over 18 years living abroad in Liberia, Laos and Mauritania. More recently, she has divided her time between Maine and Morocco.
Volunteers
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Nicole Lund is a prison abolitionist, artist, speaker, and writer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Art Administration and is pursuing a master’s in Counseling Psychology at the University of Maine at Farmington. In 2023 Lund facilitated an art workshop for the residents at Maine State Prison and continues to coordinate and curate exhibits for MPAC. She now leads expressive art groups in the community focused on substance use and trauma recovery. In 2024 she co-authored Stuffed Behind Bars: Secret Recipes From Inside Maine State Prison, with Buddy Bieler, which explores themes of community and connection as it relates to prison food systems. Their second collaboration, Cuffed & Buffed: How to Get Prison Jacked Without Weights, is due to be published in 2025.
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Olivia Hochstadt is an arts organizer and fiber artist focused on creating opportunities for incarcerated artists in Maine. Since 2021, Olivia has organized art shows with MPAC, growing the Inside Vision arts program, and has taught art history in Maine State Prison. In addition, Olivia works and teaches fiber at arts institutions in Boston. In 2021, after graduating from Colby College with a BA in Art History and Spanish, Olivia was awarded the Colby Global Fellowship to study knitwear in Shetland, the Faroe Islands, and Chile. Olivia led the art database team at the Justice Arts Coalition and continues to promote art made by incarcerated artists in Maine.
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Doug Dunbar oversees a small non-profit in Bangor called Penobscot County Cares (PCC) and is a member of No Penobscot County Jail Expansion. He spent nearly 30 years working in the U.S. House and Senate, Maine Legislature and Governor's Office, and as Maine's Chief Deputy Secretary of States.
Doug's public service career ended in 2017 when he went to jail for more than four months for alcohol-related reasons. His 136 days of incarceration opened Doug's eyes to failures within the criminal legal system and society.
He left jail to spend 15 months in the Penobscot County Treatment and Recovery Court. Importantly, he also began receiving mental health care to address life-long, concealed obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which spiralled out of control following 9/11 while Doug was working on Capiltol Hill in Washington. This untreated mental illness led to his 16 years of self-medicating with alcohol.
Now, more than 8 years in recovery, Doug is passionate about realizing transformative change in the criminal legal system and society.
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Jeffrey Evangelos is an American politician, political activist, and dissident who has long fought against injustice and our perpetual wars. He was a member of the Maine House of Representatives, serving 4 terms, as an independent. He served on the Judiciary Committee, where he has long championed the rights of the innocent, our civil liberties, Wabanaki sovereign rights, racial justice, and accountability for unjustified police violence in Maine as well as an advocate for world peace.
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Lani Graham, MD, MPH is a Family Practice physician with a master’s degree in public health. She is a Maine native with a long history of interest in health care services for the medically underserved. In Maine she has served as the Director of the Maine Bureau of Health and Maine’s Chief Public Health Officer. Until 2017, Dr. Graham was Director of the Medical Professionals Health Program, a program that serves medical professionals with mental health or substance use disorders. Dr. Graham is now retired but continues to work on a variety of medical and public health issues as a volunteer. Each year since her formal retirement she has testified in the legislature on behalf of the Maine Medical Association, the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition or the Maine Public Health Association for a range of issues. In 2025, her work has largely been focused on access to health care, firearms safety, and criminal justice. She participates in weekly legislative discussion with MPAC and people on the inside. She was also proud this year to participate in an educational program about legislative advocacy for the Long-Timers at the Maine State Prison.