Maine’s crime rate keeps falling as the system sucks wind.
Posted by Ed Folsom, September 19, 2026.
What’s going on with criminal case numbers here in Maine lately? I haven’t checked in on things for well over a year. Are criminal case filings continuing to drop, reflecting the declining crime rate? Do new cases logged by the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services remain stubbornly high compared to the overall number of new criminal cases filed in Maine courts? How are the courts doing clearing the criminal case backlogs that accrued during the pandemic? Here’s what I found.
The number of reported crimes continues to decline.
As I blogged back in December of 2024, in 2021 the Maine Department of Public Safety changed the way it counts reported crimes in Maine. This change in methodology makes it impossible to compare annual numbers gathered under the old, pre-2021, system and the new system. But under the old system, Maine’s annual Crime in Maine reports show that the rolling 10-year average of overall crimes in Maine dropped by 39.7% from 1995 through 2020, declining from 42,818 reported crimes in 1995 to 25,717 in 2020. Since 2021, reported crimes under the new system have also continued to drop.
Crime in Maine reports lag by about 1 year. The most recent is the 2024 report, issued in December of 2025. It shows a continuing decline from 2021, when Maine’s crime rate was 32.56 crimes per 1,000 people, to 2024 when it was 28.83. That’s an additional 11.45% decline in the crime rate between 2021 and 2024.
The number of criminal cases filed in court continues to decline.
Each year the Maine Judicial Branch issues an annual report that shows the number of new criminal case filings in each county and in Maine overall. The numbers cover the previous fiscal year which runs from July 1 through June 30. In my December 2024 post, I looked at the number of criminal case filings reported by the Judicial Branch from fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2024. The annual reports showed that criminal filings declined from 55,744 to 38,812 in that time frame: 30%. The 2025 annual report shows a further decline to 37,456. Overall, in the 12 fiscal years from 2014 through 2025, the number of criminal cases filed each year in Maine courts has dropped 32.8%.
So, as the number and rate of reported crimes has declined in Maine, the number of criminal cases filed in Maine courts each year has also declined, dropping by nearly one-third since 2014.
What about the number of cases taken on by the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services? Has that also declined, along with reported crimes and criminal cases filed in Maine courts?
As I also blogged in my December 2024 post, the number of new annual cases taken on by the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services and its predecessor, the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, rose markedly between fiscal years 2014 and 2024. This resulted in new annual MCPDS cases rising throughout the period against the declining number of criminal case filings in Maine courts. I posted the following chart showing the rise in MCPDS (DefenderData) cases versus criminal filings each year and the percentage relationship between the two sets of numbers. I have now added numbers for fiscal year 2025:
Year DefData Court Crim. %
2014 24,976 55,744 44.8%
2015 25,449 53,935 47.18%
2016 26,176 51,762 50.56%
2017 25,918 47,140 54.98%
2018 26,864 50,126 53.59%
2019 27,536 47,991 57.37%
2020 27,032 42,079 64.24%
2021 28,783 38,288 75.17%
2022 31,809 37,728 84.13%
2023 30,760 39,602 77.67%
2024 31,318 38,812 80.69%
2025 29,414 37,456 78.52%
As you can see, although the number of new MCPDS cases decreased between fiscal years 2024 and 2025, the number of new MCPDS cases remains high compared to the sharply reduced number of criminal cases filed each year in Maine courts during this 12-year period. Why? Do that many more people charged with crimes simply qualify as indigent these days? Are prosecutors declaring so many more class D and E crimes to be “risk of jail” cases these days than in 2014?
What’s going on with that post-pandemic criminal case backlog in Maine’s courts?
The most recent criminal-case backlog report I have seen from Maine’s Judicial Branch shows the backlog that existed on September 4, 2026. For several years now, the judicial branch has reported on the increase in its Unified Criminal Docket (UCD) backlog, between the backlog that existed in the corresponding month in 2019 and the backlog existing in the current month. In April of 2025, I blogged that York County had managed to wipe out its post-April of 2019 backlog increase, while all other Maine counties still had them, and some were really bad.
In the Judicial Branch’s September 4, 2026 report, York County remains the only Maine County to have entirely eliminated the increase in its felony-case backlog over September of 2019. York County has, however, slid backwards slightly in its overall UCD backlog. Here’s how things have changed in Maine’s 5 biggest criminal caseload counties since April of 2019, and since I blogged in April of 2025, regarding their total felony, misdemeanor, and civil violation backlogs:
Case Backlog: 4/‘19 4/’25 9/‘26
Cumberland 3,480 4,768 3,884 (↑11.6%)
York 3,309 3,205 3,631 (↑ 9.7%)
Penobscot 1,595 2,494 2,335 (↑46%)
Kennebec 1,378 2,113 2,200 (↑59.6%)
Androscoggin 1,630 1,258 1,790 (↑9.8%)
Statewide, the Judicial Branch’s stats show a 17.5% backlog increase: 18,231 cases in September of 2019 versus 21,421 cases now, for a 3,190-case statewide increase in that time frame. Kennebeck and Penobscot Counties alone are responsible for 49% of it.
All these years later, Kennebec and Penobscot Counties are still sucking wind in their backlog-reduction efforts. What could the problem be?
