The Delaware County Public Defender’s Office said landmark progress has been made at the county’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Media in tandem with a significant drop in crime and prison population.
Reporting to County Council at its Sept. 2 meeting, Public Defender Taylor Dunn said the prison population has decreased by more than 50 percent over the past eight years. He said the prison population stood at 966 in July, a significant decrease from 1,940 in July 2019 or the highwater mark of 2,083 individuals in July 2017. The other good news he reported is that the state’s Uniform Crimes Reporting System (UCRS) shows, “We are incarcerating fewer people and crime is down,” he continued. “I don’t think the outcomes could be any better for us as an office or as a county.”
Meanwhile, the number of children detained by the county has also decreased by 90 percent over the last decade, from 814 in 2014 to 66 in 2025. This decrease in the number of people being incarcerated has occurred alongside a 35 percent reduction in overall crime in the county, according to statistics from the state’s UCRS.
He said this data represents one of the most important benchmark measurements of improvement in Delco’s criminal justice system and signals a dramatic transformation…