This document provides incarceration information for the State of Delaware for the calendar years 1997, 1998, and 1999.
Delaware Department of Corrections (DOC) is a “unified” adult correction system, which makes this State different from most States in that in addition to being responsible for the prison population, it is also responsible for the detention and jail populations. A prison houses offenders sentenced for a felony to a term of a year or longer. A jail population is usually the responsibility of a county or city government and includes offenders sentenced for either a felony or misdemeanor to a term of a year or less. Sentencing processes provide for graduated sanctions and tiered “alternative sentencing programs,” which aim to limit the use of prison beds for violent and repeat offenders, and as a byproduct has induced a very large increase in the volume of cases being processed. What used to be an in or out incarceration and probation system is now a five-tiered system that offenders can move up or down depending on violations or success. Given the rapid turnaround of offenders in the system, it is not at all uncommon for a single offender to have multiple sentencing orders that may appear to be in conflict or to be active at the same time. Delaware’s major institutions can hardly be compared to prisons in other States. The major institutions house a complex set of offenders, ranging from someone with a short detention stay awaiting a preliminary hearing for a bailed release in a few days or even a few hours to offenders serving life sentences or on death row. The new population subcategories are important because they are related to extremely different statistical patterns.