This post originally appeared on the website of the New England First Amendment Coalition.

Kelli Whitlock Burton of Waldoboro asked Gov. Paul LePage a tough question this month: Why did he blame the media for his own false statement about going on vacation as the threat of government shutdown loomed?

Gov. LePage responded to Ms. Whitlock Burton with the delete button. He censored her question from his official verified Facebook page. He then took his censorship a step further by blocking her from ever commenting again on the forum he created specifically for communicating with his constituents. What the governor did violates the First Amendment, which guarantees that Ms. Whitlock Burton and every other citizen has the right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances” regardless of their viewpoint.

That’s why the ACLU of Maine sent a letter to Gov. LePage demanding he cease his unconstitutional practice of selectively deleting and blocking those whose viewpoints he disagrees with and reinstate commenting privileges to those who have been improperly blocked.

The governor’s Facebook page is different from the Facebook accounts of most users. As an elected official, his page serves a government function. He sought verification from Facebook to certify the authenticity of his account and linked to it from the government’s website (since sending the letter, the link has been removed). He uses the page to share press releases, directly address constituents in live videos, and has welcomed comments from constituents. In doing so, he created a public forum as recognized under the First Amendment.

Ms. Whitlock Burton was well within her right to comment on Gov. LePage’s Facebook page. Her comment – her first ever on his page ­– was polite and followed the protocols laid out on the state’s social media policy. She even took a screenshot of the comment to prove it. The state’s policy calls for removal of only comments that are “scandalous, libelous, defamatory, or pornographic” and suggests that agencies could adopt additional social media rules to remove comments that are “off topic, duplicative, obscene, or offensive.”

Ms. Whitlock Burton is not alone. The governor also deleted comments from many other constituents who questioned or criticized him. The ACLU is compiling a growing list of others who were similarly blocked from commenting on the governor’s page.

Gov. LePage may not want to listen to everyone’s thoughts and opinions. Praise is nice, but questions and criticism can be hard to hear. Hurt feelings, however, do not give the governor grounds to trod on the rights of the Mainers he has sworn to represent.

Evidence has shown that most youth break the law, but only a few are locked up for it. About 66,500 adolescents (ages 10-17) live in Maine, but on any given day, only 70 to 90 are behind bars. So why do some kids get to go about their lives, while others are taken from their families and put behind bars?  

A report released by the Maine Department of Corrections in January shows that more than three quarters of youth in their custody are there for low-level, non-felony offenses. 85 percent of them have three or more co-occurring mental health diagnoses, and 42 percent were sent directly from a residential treatment facility. Contrary to the claims of DHHS spokeswoman Samantha Edwards, the vast majority of kids incarcerated at Maine’s Long Creek Youth Development Center are not in prison merely “because they committed a crime.” They’re there because Maine has neglected to get them the services they need, and, in the words of Assistant District Attorney Christine Thibeault, “the only place that can’t refuse to take [them] is Long Creek.”

Multiple systems of government have failed the children who end up at Long Creek: the education system, the court system, and, of course, our health and social services system. The ACLU of Maine has talked a lot about the failures of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) here, here and here. But DHHS continues to deny that it has any part in the crisis at Long Creek, stymieing everyone else’s efforts to get kids the help they need.

While DHHS doesn’t seem to see a role for itself, we’ve come up with a short list of items that the department could undertake immediately:

• Fund community mental health options along a continuum of acuity so kids can get help in their own communities, at the level of care appropriate for their particular needs;
• Hold the residential care facilities licensed by DHHS accountable, so that the facilities stop calling the police for incidents that are a result of mental health or developmental skill deficits;
• And, for the kids who are currently locked up, find beds and services that are more developmentally and mentally appropriate for adolescents than prison.

These common-sense improvements – which fall well within the mission and responsibilities of DHHS – will go a long way toward ending the sentencing of kids with mental illness to time behind bars.