Delaware Prisons | DOC | Prison Inmate Search

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Delaware Department of Correction - Prisons & Inmate Search

Delaware State Prisons and Juvenile Facilities

The Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) follows a person from the moment they are jailed after arrest through prison and into probation. Delaware has no county jails. Like Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska, it runs a unified system, so the same state agency holds people awaiting trial and people serving sentences, often in the same building. Gov. Sherman Tribbitt signed the law creating the department in July 1975, and it now has more than 2,500 authorized staff positions.

Delaware’s four prisons

The DOC calls its secure prisons “Level V” facilities. There are four, one or more in each county:

James T. Vaughn Correctional Center (Smyrna): the largest, with room for about 2,600 men at every security level, and the pretrial jail for Kent County
Howard R. Young Correctional Institution (Wilmington): about 1,500 beds, holding most of New Castle County’s detainees
Sussex Correctional Institution (Georgetown): about 1,200 beds for men from southern Delaware
Delores J. Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution (New Castle): the state’s prison and jail for women

Below those sit community corrections centers, work release and violation-of-probation centers, including the Plummer Community Corrections Center in Wilmington, the Morris Community Corrections Center in Dover, the Central Violation of Probation Center in Smyrna, Sussex Work Release and Sussex Violation of Probation in Georgetown, and the Hazel D. Plant Women’s Treatment Facility in New Castle.

From arrest to a prison bed

Where a man goes first depends on where he was arrested. Most people booked in New Castle County go to Howard R. Young, which handles about 60% of all admissions in the state. Kent County detainees go to Vaughn, and Sussex County detainees go to Sussex Correctional Institution. Women from every county go to Baylor. After sentencing, the DOC classifies each person and may move them to another prison or, near the end of a sentence, to a work release or community corrections center.

Looking for someone in Delaware custody?

The DOC does not run its own public inmate search. Its website sends families to VINELink, which shows whether a person is in custody and where, and lets you sign up for free alerts when they are moved or released. Delaware identifies people by their SBI number (State Bureau of Identification number), which you’ll need on letters and deposits. If VINELink doesn’t answer your question, call the facility.

The 2017 Vaughn uprising

Delaware’s biggest modern prison crisis happened on February 1, 2017, when prisoners took over Building C at Vaughn and held correctional staff hostage. When the standoff ended the next day, Lt. Steven Floyd, a 16-year veteran officer, was dead. The uprising led to investigations, lawsuits, staff departures and changes in how the prison is run, and staffing remains a struggle across the system. Vaughn opened in 1971 as the Delaware Correctional Center and later took the name of the late state Sen. James T. Vaughn.

Death penalty history

Delaware no longer has the death penalty. On August 2, 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court struck down the state’s capital sentencing law because it let a judge, rather than a jury, make the findings needed for a death sentence. The 13 men left on death row were resentenced, the last two to life in prison in March 2018. Gov. John Carney signed a bill on September 26, 2024, removing the death penalty from state law entirely. For a small state, Delaware executed many people: 16 after 1976, giving it one of the highest per-capita execution rates in the nation. In January 1996 Billy Bailey became the last person hanged by a U.S. state, and the gallows were taken down in 2003. Executions took place at Vaughn. The last was Shannon Johnson, put to death by lethal injection on April 20, 2012.

Delaware juvenile facilities

Youth in Delaware’s justice system are served by the Division of Youth Rehabilitative Services (DYRS), part of the Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families. The state, not counties, runs juvenile detention. DYRS operates two detention centers for youth awaiting court: the 64-bed New Castle County Detention Center in Wilmington and Stevenson House Detention Center in Milford, which is staffed for 55 boys and girls. Youth committed by a judge may go to the Ferris School in Wilmington, a secure treatment program for up to 72 boys ages 13 to 18, where the average stay is about six months, or to the smaller secure Mowlds and Snowden cottages. Juvenile records are confidential, so families should call the facility or the youth’s DYRS worker directly.

To search for an inmate or juvenile, or to learn how to visit, call, write or send money to someone in the Delaware Department of Correction or Division of Youth Rehabilitative Services, choose a facility from the list below.