Delaware’s Department of Correction is preparing to raise wages for incarcerated workers for the first time in 30 years, but it is struggling to cover the staffing costs of one of its major employment programs.
The Department of Correction requested roughly $45,000 in the 2024 state budget to increase wages for incarcerated workers by 10 percent; the Department plans to raise wages by another 10 percent by fiscal year 2025.
DOC Commissioner Monroe Hudson told the Joint Finance Committee last week incarcerated workers haven’t seen a wage increase in decades.
"The inmate wage rates have remained static for thirty years," he said. "By comparison, according to the consumer price index, the items that inmates may purchase in the commissary have increased in cost by 34 percent from August of 2006 to the present."
DOC is also asking lawmakers to use general fund dollars to pay for staff needed to run Correctional Industries which uses incarcerated workers in silk-screening, upholstery and garment manufacturing operations — among other products — and sells inmate-made products to state agencies, schools, nonprofits and the general public.
Corrections Industries currently uses sales revenues to cover staffing costs, but Hudson says those revenues have flatlined while costs increase.
"Our staff are corrections officers," he said. "We have to pay them – by contract – a security salary, which is much higher. If you’re in a private enterprise, you may pay people minimum wage. We don’t have that option. If we were to support the salaries of corrections officers, we would drive our prices so high that we wouldn’t have a business."
Delaware Controller General Ruth Ann Jones told the JFC that the DOC's request to use general fund dollars is not uncommon for agencies that rely on their own revenues to fund key positions. "Every agency would love to have all [their funding] through the general fund because it's the most stable source available to them," she said.
DOC says it would like to direct more Corrections Industries revenues towards expanding or relaunching vocational training programs for people in custody.
Meanwhile, the DOC has also seen an increase in the size of its recruit classes — a much needed source of optimism after years of staffing woes. Hudson told the JFC that the class of 36 hires in December 2022 was the largest in two years; since beginning training, that group has shrunk to 30.
The agency is also currently in contract negotiations with all three of its employee unions.
