On Monday, First State Attorney General Matt Denn updated progress he’s made on criminal justice reform - and offered a look ahead at what he’d like to do next.
Denn’s top criminal justice reform priorities for the upcoming legislative session include reforming the state’s drug laws.
Denn calls current drug laws cumbersome and overly complicated, and argues they include provisions making city residents more likely to receive greater penalties.
Denn points to “aggravating factors” that increase chances a drug charge will result in a mandatory jail sentence – not just for selling drugs but also carrying them.
“Within a football field’s length of a park: that’s an aggregating factor. Or a football field’s length from a place of worship or a football field’s length from a school," Denn said. "All of those increase the potential for a mandatory drug sentence for a drug crime.”
Denn says because these aggravating factors are easier to rack up in a city, residents there often unfairly face different sentences than suburban residents.
He adds he’d like to replace aggravating factors with measures that more directly target the specific conduct, like mandating jail time for selling drugs to children.
Denn also wants to focus on drug treatment programs for inmates while they’re incarcerated and for defendants in lieu of getting incarcerated.
Another priority is closing a loophole in the state’s illegal gun possession law. As currently written under Delaware's criminal code, violent felonies committed as juveniles are not accompanied with mandatory sentences.
He says the certainty of a real punishment for people with histories of violence illegally carrying a gun is a tool that the state needs to have in its toolbox. He says he's been asking legislature to make this change since he's been Attorney General and will continue to do so.
Denn says addressing violent crime has been one of his top priorities over the last year.
He targeted - and will continue to target - two areas: increasing foot patrols in areas of violent crime, and improving programs that address underlying factors of serious violence.
“To invest in after-school and weekend and summer programs for juveniles, to improve the staffing in our high poverty elementary schools and middle schools, re-entry programs for inmates who are returning to our communities from prison, and drug treatment for Delawareans who have substance use disorder," Denn said.
He adds the state made its biggest investment in re-entry programs in over a decade last year - committing $2 million to them over the next two years. But he notes it’s uncertain if more funding for those programs in the works.
He also says for four-months last year, state dollars were used for a police foot patrol program in Wilmington that he says was working to decrease crime.
“Neighbors were happy to see the police officers, officers were able to talk to members of the community in these neighborhoods in ways they can’t it they’re just riding around in cars," Denn said. "I think it very much was what people are thinking about when they talk about community policing.”
But when the state subsidy dried up, Denn says the city of Wilmington refused to share the information legislators wanted to continue providing those funds.
However, Denn is hopeful under a new mayor’s leadership, foot patrols will be re-assessed as a priority.
