VIA Arch City Defenders
Dear St. Louis City NAACP,
As Black-led organizations that have been deeply engaged with systems of criminalization and incarceration over the past decade, we observed closely the recent reporting regarding your call for expansion of the City Justice Center (CJC), or construction of a new jail. We have reviewed your report supporting this recommendation. We have major concerns and objections, as well as a number of corrections that we wish to offer. We hope you will take these seriously and consider redirecting your efforts, as it seems your recommendation has already caught the attention of local public leaders, who typically require little encouragement to invest ever more resources in carceral institutions. Given the public nature of this discourse, we are sharing this letter publicly as well as with you directly.
We start with a fundamental understanding that undergirds much of our work as racial justice organizations: the criminal legal system in St. Louis and the detention facilities that act as the receptacle for those trapped within that system are and have long been sites of death and destruction for Black St. Louisans. This is not only true for Black St. Louisans; indeed, these systems—which operate at a scale otherwise unknown throughout most of the developed world—are costly and harmful to all people. But given our shared concern for Black people and communities in this region that have been marginalized and disempowered for generations, we believe it is essential to recognize that any call to expand the carceral footprint is a call to criminalize and cage more Black bodies. As a matter of principle, we find this unconscionable and unacceptable.
However, we do understand, and deeply relate to, your concern with the conditions which plague those held in the city’s cages. We know that you are aware of this longstanding concern given your report’s repeated citations to the work of our organizations over the past decade. There are many such references—at least 15 by our count—including published reports, media coverage, and federal litigation. We are heartened that you have engaged extensively with our work. We are disappointed that you have misrepresented that work in some key respects.
We can certainly appreciate that there are many editorial choices to be made in attempting to summarize the history on a topic as widely discussed and debated as jail policy and practices in St. Louis. And we do not take on the task of responding to the entirety of a 43-page report on the subject, particularly since we are in strong agreement with many of your recommendations related to transparency, improved medical care, civilian oversight, continued bail reform, expanded pretrial services, and accountability for inhumane and abusive treatment. (We have loudly advocated for these changes and more for the CJC, specifically, for years.) However, we feel compelled to address three major issues in the report in hopes that you will reconsider your approach in future communications.
First, we would like to correct and expand on the history of the Workhouse, its function as a city jail facility, and the impact of its closure on jailing in St. Louis. We appreciate the obvious effort to provide so much historical context, as it is crucial in discussing this issue. We are, however, struck by the omission of Judge Clyde Cahill’s extensive comments regarding the impact on poor Black communities in his 1990 opinion—an opinion that is cited in your report for various other findings. We have long believed that Judge Cahill’s opinion holds the key to understanding the core function of the Workhouse in St. Louis history, so we include extended excerpts from that opinion here:
Certain neighborhoods in St. Louis have become the target of intensive police activity… These intrusive tactics, coupled with detention because of poverty, lead to a destruction of confidence in the criminal justice system. . . .
Prisons and punishment alone cannot be the answer—there must be encouragement, assistance and above all, confidence in the fairness of the legal system. Mass detention for petty offenses now may give temporary relief but it only postpones the misery to come.
Most of the persons now arrested for these drug-related offenses are young black men from North St. Louis. Their prospects are as bleak as their surroundings. . . While the racial connotations of this issue are seldom mentioned, they may, nonetheless, be a factor in the public’s perception of the drug problem. There are myths, which have been partially developed by the media, that only minorities are involved with drugs. The City’s prison population, nearly all black, perpetuates this misconception. The Court does not believe that racial identity is used as a factor in these matters; but nonetheless, because most blacks who are arrested are poor, they are more likely to be detained when denied recognizance.[1]
In other words, the Workhouse was not just a decrepit and inhumane facility—though it was that. It was a warehouse for caging poor Black St. Louisans starved of resources in their communities. We know well that many people would love to strip that essential context from a historical understanding of the Workhouse, but we assume that is not the intention of the St. Louis City NAACP.
This history also helps to explain why the Workhouse, in the years leading up to its closure, was not merely a “436-bed . . . overflow and sentenced-detainee facility” in a city with “capacity for roughly 1,300 detainees across two separate physical plants,” as your report states. These numbers are incorrect, and significantly so. In fact, in 2002, the City expanded the capacity of the Workhouse to 1,222 beds. The city’s own Inmate Population Dashboard[2] shows that the city jail population exceeded 1,300 every year between 2003 and 2017. It peaked at 2,372 in 2007. And in every single one of those years, the Workhouse population exceeded that of the CJC, which was often reserved for individuals the City deemed to have “more serious” charges (contrary to your assertion that the CJC was intended for “low-risk, unable-to-pay detainees”).
Accordingly, the Workhouse was not some minor overflow facility; it was the central driver and receptacle for pretrial incarceration in St. Louis. This is important in two respects: first, in forming an accurate understanding of the movements to close the Workhouse and end cash bail, as explained further below; and second, in properly characterizing jail population trends. At multiple points in your report, you suggest that the current jail population is comparable to the population pre- Workhouse closure. (“Population did drop for a period. It has now rebounded.”; “The population effect of these countervailing trends has been meaningful but not permanent.”)
This is a profound misunderstanding. Yes, the population decline has reversed over the past four years. We are deeply concerned about that. But, even with this recent increase, today’s levels are a fraction of what they were throughout the years that both the Workhouse and CJC were in full operation. This is the impact of closing the Workhouse, an impact that should be prized and protected by all who understand the social and racial dimensions of mass incarceration. This is why it is unwise and irresponsible to pursue jail expansion or new jail construction.
As an important final point on the impact of closing the Workhouse: the problems with the CJC did not begin when the Workhouse closed. In our work, we have called this a “zombie lie” because it continues to proliferate no matter how many times it is disproven. Yet this fallacy is embedded throughout your report, including in the Executive Summary, which claims the “current death and overdose toll . . . is the predictable outcome of decisions the city made a generation ago—closing the Workhouse without expanding downtown capacity . . .” This is especially confusing because the report gives extensive treatment to the task force established to address the crisis conditions leading to a mass uprising inside the CJC and revealing broad structural and cultural deficiencies—all of which occurred in February and March of 2021.
The problems in the CJC started before the closure of the Workhouse, not after. That is not a matter of interpretation; it is a knowable, confirmable fact—one that we have noted on previous occasions[3]. We are disappointed that bad-faith actors continue to perpetuate falsehoods about the relationship between these two jail facilities, and we are concerned that even sincere, well-meaning advocates like the City NAACP have apparently come to believe these falsehoods.
Our second major area of concern is that your report misrepresents the local movements to close the Workhouse and end cash bail. We assume these are honest misunderstandings, but they are still important. The report spends several paragraphs discussing what it titles “The bail-reform interaction.” Quoting from that section: “The NAACP’s read of this record is that the no-cash-bail movement did what its supporters intended it to do—it stopped detaining presumptively innocent people because they were poor—but that the movement was not paired with a matching investment in pretrial services, community-based supervision, medically supervised diversion, and mental-health and substance-use alternatives.” [emphasis in original]
This is another confusing statement and one of a few places in the report where you seem to conflate the “movement,” or community advocates and organizers, with the policymakers responsible for having taken or not taken any number of official actions over the past decade. But given this explicit reference to cash bail abolition supporters, and attribution of intent to them, it is surprising that your report so deeply miscalculates this intent. While this section of the report does not name any specific people or organizations, we feel quite confident that the undersigned organizations merit prominent inclusion in any list of local supporters of the “no-cash-bail movement.” As such, we presume to speak from that perspective.
It is simply inaccurate to suggest that we were fully satisfied by the 2019 bail reforms in St. Louis. Despite meaningful gains, our dissatisfaction should be obvious given that our organizations continued litigating bail claims, operating court-watching programs, releasing reports highlighting ongoing pretrial abuses, and offering commentary calling for more significant changes. Critically, we have emphasized repeatedly the need for a paradigm shift away from detention and supervision and toward services and support.
Here, we find it helpful to reference the much-discussed published materials of the Close the Workhouse (CTW) campaign. (In case it is not clear, there has been a very close relationship between these efforts. Also, like the cash bail elimination effort, CTW is implicated in your report’s discussion of “the decision not to plan” for the jail’s closure.) CTW’s seminal 2018 report[4], “The Plan to Close the Workhouse,” presents four different steps to accomplish the campaign’s goals: (1) release individuals incarcerated pretrial, (2) close the Workhouse, (3) decline to prosecute and criminalize individuals (emphasizing crimes of poverty and substance addiction), and (4) reinvest in communities. There were specific, individualized action steps outlined for the Mayor, Circuit Attorney, and Board of Aldermen. And for the reinvestment of funds, there were proposals to “Fund This Instead,” including: affordable housing, community-based mental healthcare, neighborhood-based community spaces that are open to all, economic and funded educational opportunities, and retraining programs for former jail employees. Finally, there was a section underscoring the importance of robust pre-plea diversion and “pretrial services, not surveillance.”
To the extent that the City NAACP intends to communicate its agreement and alignment with this 2018 vision in its new report, we welcome and commend it. We strongly disagree, however, with your assertion that “the City under-invests in detention capacity.” We hope that you will revisit our organizations’ consistent offerings on these issues through the years, take that into account in describing these efforts in the future, and reconsider your own conclusions regarding the ideal level of carceral funding in St. Louis.
The third and final issue we want to raise concerns the City NAACP’s decision to rely entirely on meetings and communication with city agencies, contractors, and the federal government in forming an understanding of and response to the problems with the CJC. Based on your report, the findings and recommendations were based on conversations with the City’s Director of Public Safety, Interim Sheriff and members of his staff, Division of Corrections personnel, the contracted medical provider, Chief Robert Tracy and other SLMPD command staff, and the Archview facility as prospective medical provider, written correspondence with the Special Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division[5], and review of various published materials.
Given your apparent interest in ongoing involvement with the administration of jail operations—an interest we do not share—we can appreciate the value of those conversations for you. Still, we believe you have missed important perspectives. It is clear to us that the decision not to communicate directly with advocacy and community organizations that have been deeply engaged with these issues for many years led to major gaps in your reporting and analysis. For several years and to this day, our organizations and others have sustained federal litigation involving conditions and practices in the CJC, direct actions and campaigns to decarcerate and end the jail deaths, advocacy supporting real civilian oversight, and data collection and reporting on in-custody deaths in the St. Louis region. That knowledge and expertise might have been helpful to you as well.
Far more importantly, though, there are, sadly, many people and families that have direct experience with the CJC from all angles. There are people who have suffered greatly. There are people who have extensive experience with the operating practices of the jail from the perspective of a detained person. There are people who have lost loved ones in the CJC’s cages.[6] In our view, these are invaluable perspectives, and it is a mistake to offer solutions and recommendations without soliciting and incorporating these voices.[7] It is not lost on us that the agencies and officials you took the time to consult are those who have created the conditions that we would all like to change.
As a closing note, we reiterate that we share your assessment that there is an urgent need for change on many fronts related to the City Justice Center. This is a life-and-death matter and, as such, one that we approach with the utmost seriousness. We have seen firsthand the cost of getting it wrong. It is time for us to get it right, and that includes many of the things that you have called for in terms of oversight, transparency, investment in medical care and services supporting release and return to community. Your recommendation to expand the city’s jail capacity to incarcerate more people both undermines these imperatives and raises the potential for more suffering, now and in the future. We urge you to reconsider and retract this recommendation, as we remain steadfastly opposed to any effort to pursue that goal. We look forward to working together on those issues where there is genuine alignment. Our community expects and deserves a principled and unified approach to this critical issue from all those involved.
Very sincerely,
Action St. Louis
ArchCity Defenders
Care Not Cages campaign
Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression
Freedom Community Center
Missouri Justice Coalition
No More Jail Deaths campaign
Organization for Black Struggle
Some Things Must Be Heard
[1] Tyler v. United States, 737 F. Supp. 531 (E.D. Mo. 1990)
[2] https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/data/dashboards/inmates/index.cfm
[3] https://www.archcitydefenders.org/acdjj14/
[4] “The Plan to Close the Workhouse & Promote a New Vision for St. Louis,” 2018, available at https://archcitydefenders.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CloseTheWorkhousePlan_Rev110112018-1.pdf
[5] We are highly skeptical that this Department of Justice will serve as a productive oversight body to ensure humane jail conditions and practices. Still, we feel compelled to note that correspondence with DOJ officials does not constitute federal oversight.
[6] Many of the people and families that have been impacted by this system in recent years have come together under the banner of “No More Jail Deaths,” a campaign demanding humane treatment and conditions for people detained in the city’s cages.
[7] We are also concerned that your report offers new public details regarding a recent in-custody death without having communicated these same details to the family of the deceased individual.
