Department of Correction participating in Delaware Open Data Portal
Access to public information offered by the Delaware Department of Correction is now available through an open data portal.
Administered by the Open Data Council, the Delaware Open Data Portal is an online database providing monthly inmate and probationer population reports. The reports are available in the public safety section of the portal.
Users accessing inmate population data can search for aggregate numbers of offenders by year, month, county, type of institution, name of institution, sentence type, gender, and ethnicity. End of the month population totals will be uploaded into the portal on an ongoing basis. In accordance with state law, personal identifying information of offenders is not furnished to the public.
Joanna Champney, chief of the DOC's Planning & Research Unit, said, "The benefit of this information being readily available online to the public is that they can access it instantly and select their own parameters, without needing to submit a data request to the Department and await a response."
Public availability of prison and probationer data allows researchers, policy professionals, and concerned citizens to instantly access the information on their own. The DOC received more than 100 data requests in fiscal year 2017, many of which contained requests for basic prison and probation census counts and information about offenders, such as race, ethnicity, and sex.
A data dictionary is available to aid users in understanding the various terms used to describe and categorize the data.
The database platform, hosted by Socrata, allows viewers to not only view quantitative summaries, but also to create data visualizations such as charts and graphs to analyze trends or make comparisons.
DOC Commissioner Perry Phelps said, "We recognize that data and analytics are more important than ever in driving public policy. We are proud to be participating in the Open Data Council's effort and we're pleased to publish our corrections population data on the portal."
The Open Data Council was established in January 2016 and brings together a team from state government specifically focused on making more data available to members of the public. To date, nine agencies have contributed 46 datasets to the portal.
The DOC will be working to identify additional datasets that can be published on the Open Data Portal.
Questions about the corrections data published on the Portal can be directed to the DOC's Planning & Research Unit. Data and research requests can be submitted using procedures described on the DOC website or by contacting Chief Joanna Champney.
