Delaware Correction Commissioner Stanley W. Taylor found legislative support Thursday for changes in mandatory prison sentencing procedures that might limit the growth of the state's prison population.
The immediate alternative, Taylor told members of the legislative Joint Finance Committee, is a 1,000-bed prison expansion that could cost about $85 million. Given the current rate of prison population growth, the expansion would have to be authorized this year for the beds to be ready within three years or so, he said.
"It takes a year to design, two years to build and, by the time it's open, it's full," Taylor said in discussing the budget for his department in Gov. Ruth Ann Minner's spending plan for the budget year that begins July 1.
Taylor said he supports a proposal to give judges the flexibility to tailor sentences to fit individual cases. He also endorsed a call from the American Bar Association for states to look at their criminal justice systems - from arrests and pretrial detention through sentencing and release procedures - to try to avert new prison-building booms.
"At the rate we're going with incarceration, you're going to bankrupt this state," Rep. Dennis P. Williams, D-Wilmington North, said in supporting the idea.
In December 2000, the state completed a 2,500-bed expansion at a cost of just under $183 million. But as of Thursday, the prison population was about 100 inmates over the system's operating capacity of 6,587. That is the number of inmates the department figures it can handle safely on a day-to-day basis. The operating capacity is about 1,900 inmates higher than design capacity.
Sen. James T. Vaughn Sr., D-Clayton, said probation violators represent 35 percent to 40 percent of the daily prison population, and called for strategies to sharply reduce that number.
"That's an area that really didn't used to be there," said Vaughn, a former state correction commissioner.
The correction department's proposed budget of $190.96 million is 2.3 percent more than the current year. In November, Taylor asked Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to recommend a 4.4 percent increase for the budget year that begins July 1.
Reach James Merriweather at 678-4273 or jmerriweather@delawareonline.com.
