Jack Guerin

Jack Guerin is founder of the Unitarian Universalist Delaware Advocacy Network

Delaware and New Jersey are relatively small Mid-Atlantic states separated only by the Delaware Bay. Despite their proximity, these two states differ dramatically when it comes to crime and punishment.

Delaware has much more of both.

The rate of incarceration in Delaware is almost double the rate in New Jersey — 690 per 100,000 vs. 360 in New Jersey, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. New Jersey has reduced it’s prison population by 37.5% since 1998, while Delaware increased by 13.5%. The Delaware prison population has fallen by 9.3% in the past three years.

How do the two states compare in terms of crime rates? According to FBI crime rates, Delaware’s violent crime rate was 453.4 incidents per 100,000 people, almost double New Jersey’s rate of 228.8 per 100,000 people.

U.S. News and World Report found that New Jersey had the second lowest rate of property crime nationally. Delaware ranked 34th.

New Jersey implemented bail reform at the beginning of 2017. During the past two years, their pre-trial population has declined by more than 20 percent while violent crime has plummeted. Homicide, robbery and burglary are down more than thirty percent since 2016.

Under New Jersey’s new bail statute, more than eight thousand offenders, about 18 percent of total defendants, have been detained without bail because they were determined to be a danger to the community. In Delaware, high-risk defendants can still buy their freedom based on the system of cash bail.

Yet in 2018, Delaware's Senate Republican Caucus refused to vote on meaningful bail reform.

Prison overcrowding in Delaware is extreme, at 154 percent of it's lowest design capacity. exceeded by only three other states (Alabama, Illinois and Nebraska). In the last budget year, Delaware spent more than $30 million on prison overtime — a 39 percent jump over the prior year. To reduce overtime and improve staff safety, the DOC is now transferring prisoners to Pennsylvania at an annual cost of $14.6 million.

The Delaware criminal justice system provides the worst of both worlds—high incarceration and high crime rates.

Many people will find this counter-intuitive, believing that longer prison sentences deter crime. However, recidivism is the key criminal justice metric and is usually measured by the percentage of people released from prison who re-offend within three years.

The recidivism rate in Delaware is 76 percent, while the rate in New Jersey is 30 percent.

The high level of overcrowding in Delaware prisons impedes the delivery of effective rehabilitation services. Overcrowding is linked to warehousing. Delaware’s longer prison stays also disrupt supportive bonds in the community and strengthen associations with other criminals.

Parole has played a major role in reducing New Jersey’s incarceration rate. Following a 2001 lawsuit against the State Parole Board for its lengthy backlog of hearings, parole approval rates in New Jersey rose from 30 percent to 51 percent and have remained high, providing thousands annually with the chance for rehabilitation in their community.

A Pew Charitable Trust study compared the experience of offenders released on parole in New Jersey compared to those who serve their full sentence. After controlling for key risk factors, including age, time served, current offense, and criminal history, the study concluded that “parolees are still 36 percent less likely to return to prison for new crimes within three years of release.”

The cost of parole supervision is generally one-tenth that of incarceration.

Delaware eliminated parole with the 1989 “Truth in Sentencing,” bill, drastically reducing the First State of the lower recidivism and cost which New Jersey has achieved through the parole system.

Following the riot at the Vaughn prison, Gov. John Carney assembled an Independent Review Team which has announced measurable progress on 41 recommendations in the final report released in July, 2018. None of the recommendations included measures to reduce the prison population.

The Delaware ACLU and the Coalition for Smart Justice is challenging the new 150th General Assembly to take up the cause of reducing mass incarceration, which has become a non-partisan issue now — it has been addressed by federal legislation and by many state governments, including southern states like Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma.

Now is the time for Delaware to join the national justice reform movement.