Between a rock and hard place: Delaware prison reform and the urban landscape, 1961-1977

Abstract

In the midst of several well publicized prison scandals, numerous lawsuits and a mass of studies revealing the squalid nature of U.S. prisons, in the early 1960s and 1970s Delaware was one of a handful of states experimenting with fresh alternatives to incarceration utilizing urban space. The leader of these reform efforts was Paul Keve, acting Delaware Commissioner of Corrections. Keve's ambitious program was to be anchored in the state's two largest cities, Wilmington and Dover, where he hoped to use the opportunities afforded by the urban landscape to facilitate and enhance his program of rehabilitation. Keve's program, however, met with crushing opposition from Delaware's two rural southern counties who controlled the state legislature. This essay examines the tumultuous history of the period by looking at the state as a microcosm of the nation and how heated discourse over prison reform intersected with the battle to control urban space and how issues of race and Delaware's political geography ultimately defeated prison reform.