The Plummer Community Corrections Center appears to be closed for good despite some pushback.
Plummer offered Level 4 supervision, meaning residents lived on the premises but were allowed to leave. They could be shuttled to work off-site and return at the end of their shifts. Plummer lost its last few residents at the start of March.
Level 4 supervision includes home confinement, residential drug treatment and work release centers like Plummer. Department of Correction Commissioner Terra Taylor said Level 4 facilities and programs are important to the justice system.
“The program itself is needed, and they do a great job,” Taylor said. “So, I don't envision that it will phase out. I think that we're to the point where we have the right individuals that should be in our facilities, in our facilities.”
Taylor added that closure was not an easy decision.
Now, Plummer’s doors are shut to all but Department of Correction staff as they discuss potentially opening the building to a community-based program.
Several advocates and Wilmington City Councilmembers sought to keep Plummer open rather than move inmates downstate away from loved ones. Councilmember Shané Darby held a press conference outside of Plummer in November, calling on the state to reverse its decision to close the center.
Wilmington-based advocates wanted to keep a work-release program in northern Delaware largely due to cultural ties to the area and concerns of potential racism with moving Plummer residents downstate.
“All the best practices, all of the national studies say for re-entry, for rehabilitation, you have to be close to home,” Darby said. “That is the best way for you to feel supported. A lot of times, these men are getting their food and their toiletries delivered by their family, by their grandmoms, by their moms, by their aunties.”
Many Plummer residents are now in Smyrna at a Level 4 facility at Vaughn Correctional Center.
At a state Senate committee hearing on Plummer’s closure, UD scientist and criminal justice professor Dan O’Connell presented current research on work-release programs like Plummer’s and said work alone, unless it changes someone’s identity, has little impact on reducing recidivism.
“They're fairly conclusive that just having a job is not enough… We like to say that jobs that change a person's identity are important. So, ‘I used to be a drug dealer, now I'm a carpenter,’ right? So a long term, non-transitory job that I'm dedicated to tends to have an impact.”
Change also takes time, O’Connell added.
“It takes a long time to walk into the woods,” O’Connell said. “And it takes a long time to walk out of the woods.”
The average stay at Plummer was about 65 days before residents moved home.
Tuesday’s speakers, including Commissioner Taylor, acknowledged Level 4 programs serve a necessary purpose in the First State but did not address concerns for moving Plummer residents further south.
