DEL. PRISON COUNT RISES, DASHING HOPES FOR LONG-TERM DROP

Inmates Increase 3.4% In 2001, After A Decline In 2000

Hopes for a long-term leveling out of Delaware's prison population are
fading, prompting talk of another building program.

Prison officials had recorded a year-to-year decline in the number of
inmates near the end of 2000, which Correction Commissioner Stanley W.
Taylor Jr. said was the first since he became commissioner in 1995.

But at the start of this year, state prisons held 6,341 inmates, an
increase of 3.4 percent from the count of a year earlier.

"The trend has been climbing," he said, "so the good news we thought
was in store for us is not as good as we had hoped."

A gradual climb generally has been the pattern since July 1, fueled in
part by aggressive policing policies in Wilmington that have produced
more arrests for drugs and other crimes, Taylor said.

The prison system usually maintains a few extra beds on a daily basis,
he said.

But there was little room at Wilmington's Gander Hill prison, where
crowding and other alleged shortcomings inspired a lawsuit by 37
inmates in June 2000. Swelled by inmates awaiting trial in New Castle
County, prisoner counts there continue to be a problem.

As of Saturday, the prison held 1,779

inmates, including 80 inmates housed in overflow space in the
gymnasium and seven housed

in the booking-and-receiving area. The prison was designed for 872
inmates but has an operational capacity of 1,480.

Because Delaware's inmate population includes people waiting for
trial, big rounds of arrests like Wilmington's recent crackdown can
push up short-term prisoner counts, Taylor said.

"That will likely run its course at some point, and the numbers will
start dropping back," he said.

If not, he said, he might have to call for a new building program by
the end of this year.

A four-year, $186 million building program was completed in late 2000,
increasing the prison system's operating capacity by 2,500 beds to a
total of 6,585. During emergencies, correction officials say, the
prison system can safely house as many as 7,200 inmates on a temporary
basis.

Taylor sounded the alarm during a Nov. 8 appearance before Gov. Ruth
Ann Minner's budget writers.

"If this rate of growth continues," he said at the time, "we will need
to start planning new construction."

Consultants who prepared a 10-year master plan for the Department of
Correction, issued in May 2000, said the building program nearing
completion at the time was insufficient to meet even short-term needs.

Given no change in sentencing and incarceration policies, the
consultants said, Delaware would need 2,978 more beds - not counting
the existing 2,500-bed addition - by 2010. The new building program
would cost an estimated $200 million.

A national prison population report for 2001 is not due out until next
month, but preliminary figures indicate prison populations continue to
be flat, said Allen J. Beck, chief of correction statistics for the
federal Bureau of Justice Statistics in Washington, D.C.

"They're not going down much, but they're not increasing appreciably,
either," Beck said.

For all of 2000, he said, the count of state prisoners was up
slightly. But it dropped by 6,243 inmates - from 1,242,719 inmates to
1,236,476, or about half of 1 percent - over the last six months of
that year, the first such decline in 28 years.

"The last six months [of 2000] were remarkable because we had numbers
of inmates being released that obviously were greater than the numbers
being admitted," Beck said.

Prison population figures from the bigger states usually are reliable
indicators of what is happening nationally, he said. In New York, for
instance, officials are sticking to projections for a 9 percent
population decline during the two-year period that ends April 1.

"Our population is still on the decline," said Linda Foglia, a
spokeswoman for the New York Department of Correctional Services.

Policies that allow selected nonviolent inmates to leave prison before
their sentences expire have helped account for some of the drop,
Foglia said.

Beck said declines in prison populations generally reflect drops in
crime rates, as well as the eroding impact of 1990s policies that
imposed longer prison terms and offered little alternative sentencing.

"Now we're looking for alternative sanctions - ways to divert
offenders which are cost-effective yet attentive to public safety," he
said.

In Delaware, critics have failed to persuade key legislators to scrap
mandatory sentences blamed for contributing heavily to prison crowding.

But former Gov. Russell W. Peterson says legislative sponsors are
being rounded up for a bill intended to do away with minimum mandatory
sentences for drug offenses.

Peterson is honorary chairman of Stand Up for What's Right and Just,
an organization he says is building quickly toward a goal of at least
10,000 members. The group is pressing for alternative sentencing,
speedier trials and programs to attack the root causes of crime,
including drug abuse and poverty.

A primary goal in the group's sentencing reform effort, he said, is
repealing a law that poses a mandatory three-year sentence for
possession of five grams or more of cocaine.

"I think we have a 50-50 chance of making it happen this year,"
Peterson said, "and a 100 percent chance of having it happen within
two years."