Carper oversaw “the largest prison expansion in state history”
While Carper was governor, Delaware’s Black incarceration rate nearly doubled.
When Tom Carper was first elected to the U.S. Senate, The Washington Post published a short profile on his legislative priorities:
As a governor, his record took a somewhat more conservative twist. His “Better Chance” welfare reform program limited payments to four years, required recipients to work, denied additional payments to families that continued to have children and cut welfare rolls by about a quarter in two years. He built additional prisons, pushed for longer sentences served, and initiated public school choice and charter schools.
As you can see in the graph below, the prison population exploded in the 1990s while under then-Governor Tom Carper. Specifically, the Black incarceration rate nearly doubled.
Those high rates of incarceration here in Delaware have continued until this day.
In the 1996 Delaware Gubernatorial Debate, Carper defended his record of mass incarceration:
We have provided for very harsh sentences of those who commit crimes with weapons, violent crimes, in the state of Delaware. Eighty-nine percent of them are serving their maximum term which is the highest of any state in the country. We’re also undertaking the largest prison construction in the history of the state.
And in his final State of the State address as governor, Carper touted “the largest prison expansion in state history” as one of his signature achievements. These high incarceration rates have continued into the present day.
Kerri Evelyn Harris knows the war on drugs and “tough on crime” approach had a devastating impact on communities of color, which is why we need a restorative justice system and put an end to mandatory minimums, excessive sentences, the death penalty, and a militarized police force.
That’s why Kerri is pushing for policies that will end mass incarceration and tackle racial injustices in our prison system.
Kerri understands that the single biggest indicator of crime and poverty is lack of opportunity. That is why it is clear to Kerri that a “tough on opportunity” approach to criminal justice reform is the only way to try create positive lasting change within the system; providing the proper resources to our public schools (for both academic and social learning), strong job training programs, subsidized childcare for parents seeking degrees, and actively working to diversify the field of education will begin to heal the wounds caused by years of injustice and help our entire state move forward.
We need a champion in the U.S. Senate pushing for criminal justice reform here in Delaware and across the nation.
That criminal justice champion is Kerri Evelyn Harris.
