BANGOR - A transitional program for female prison inmates that opened this month on the campus of the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center is intended to help them move back into the community and stay out of jail.

"A critical element of the Women's Re-entry Center is giving these women a step-down opportunity for a more normal life similar to what they will face after release," said Becky Hayes Boober, director of women's services and executive director of the Maine Re-entry Network for the Department of Corrections.

Although security measures are in place and there is around-the-clock staffing, the center looks more like a college dorm than a prison block. Most rooms have no locks on the doors and there are no bars on the windows. Instead of prison garb, inmates wear their own clothes.

They cook their own meals, do their own laundry and participate in various classes and job-readiness sessions.

Ten women have already moved into the center, which eventually will house up to 38. The opening of the center, on the third floor of a red brick building of the former Bangor Mental Health Institute, was welcomed as a way to ease overcrowding in the women's unit at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham.

The Legislature this year approved a $1 million renovation of the building and the Department of Corrections has contracted with Volunteers of America Northern New England to handle the new center's day-to-day operations.

The transitional program is open to inmates who have served 120 days of their sentences and have less than a year remaining. They must be nonviolent offenders and are required to complete a substance abuse treatment program if they have alcohol or drug problems.

"It makes you feel normal again," said Lisa Montreuil, 36, of Portland, after her first week at the center. "The past week has been overwhelming but joyful."

Montreuil, a mother of three who has been in and out of jail for the past 20 years and is now serving 20 months for drug trafficking, expects to be released next year.

She said programs offered at the Maine Correctional Center and the re-entry center have given her the skills to stay off drugs and be a productive member of society and a good mother.