UPDATE: Del. AG calls for drug, gun law revisions

Attorney General Matt Denn says Delaware’s drug laws are “cumbersome and overly complicated” and result in disproportionate penalties for poor people and minorities living in urban areas.

“Our drug laws also don’t focus sufficient resources on substance abuse treatment for inmates while they are incarcerated or for defendants who are getting treatment in lieu of being incarcerated,” explains Attorney General Denn.

With another new legislative session approaching in the coming months, Denn says his office plans to work with legislators and law enforcement officials to create a specific reform proposal.

He called for changes in the criminal code, which allows harsher sentences for drug offenders simply for possessing drugs inside a vehicle, or within a few hundred feet of a school, park or church.

An important step, he says, is addressing the misconception that Delaware’s state prisons have a high incarceration rate for drug crimes which can be hard to do because accurate numbers are “notoriously difficult” to come by.

“We estimated that about five percent of Delaware’s state prison population was there because of mandatory sentences related to drug charges,” he says. “That’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison, because that’s people who are there under mandatory sentences as opposed to sentences where a judge may impose at his or her discretion.”

Denn also called on lawmakers to allow minimum mandatory sentences for criminals prohibited from possessing firearms because of violent felonies committed when they were juveniles.

According the Department of Justice, young adults who violate their ban from possessing guns because of a violent felony face no mandatory jail sentence.

“It’s a relatively small number of people who it impacts but those people are people who are carrying guns and who have a violent felony history in the recent past, so there are people who are of significant concern for us,” he explains.

According to Denn, the illegal gun possession bill was initially proposed two years ago.