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The Clayton attorney was in a basement hearing room of the Missouri Capitol on Monday, testifying for a bill sponsored by Rep. Tara Peters, R-Rolla. The bill would repeal the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act (MIRA).

For the past year, Schock has been doing battle against that law in the Cole County Courthouse, just down the street from the Capitol. He is representing prison inmates who have been sued by Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

The “pay-to-stay� law allows Bailey to take up to 90 percent of an inmate’s assets and apply it to the costs of their incarceration. The law has been around since the 1980s, passed during America’s “tough-on-crime� phase that fed the ongoing mass incarceration crisis. Most states have such a law. Illinois repealed its version two years ago.

In Missouri, the law is applied arbitrarily, and it’s often poor people like Schock’s clients — such as Tonya Honkomp and Daniel Wayne Wallace — who end up losing the little savings they have. It can be money to help them get re-established after leaving prison.

Schock believes the law is unconstitutional, and he’s hoping that Cole County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Limbaugh or, eventually, the Missouri Supreme Court, agrees.

But he’d rather win his argument in the people’s house, he told the lawmakers on Monday.

Judges generally don’t like to overturn laws passed in the General Assembly, even bills passed decades ago. The better course of action, Schock suggested, is for the Legislature to correct what a previous body got wrong. He also shared with lawmakers that, like most of them, he’s a conservative Republican.

“Judges do not like to overrule actions of the legislative branch,� Schock told the lawmakers. “If this law is as immoral as I believe it to be, I respectfully request that the legislature take the bull by the horns right here and repeal this (law).�

In response to a question from Rep. Barry Hovis, R-Cape Girardeau, Schock said it’s important to differentiate between a person’s criminal case, when a judge can fine them or order them to pay restitution, and a MIRA case, which is separate from their punishment. Hovis, a retired police officer, had asked about cases involving a wealthy defendant and a white-collar crime, or a persistent offender who owes money to a victim.

The judges who sentence folks to prison already handle those situations on the “front end,� Schock said. Adding a second financial penalty, in a separate civil action, is part of what makes MIRA unconstitutional, he argued.

Nobody testified against the bill, including Bailey’s office. One of the lobbyists who testified in favor of Peters’ bill, former state Sen. Jeff Smith, said it’s his understanding that Bailey’s office has told lawmakers it doesn’t intend to oppose the bill.

Smith, a Democrat who was convicted of obstructing the FBI in a campaign finance investigation, served a year in federal prison after resigning from his Missouri Senate seat in 2009. He has become one of the state’s foremost advocates for prisoner’s rights and helping prisoners re-enter society.

Smith was at the Monday hearing to represent the nonprofit. He told lawmakers that about 11,000 people leave Missouri prisons every year after serving their time and head back to their communities.

“They can use that money in very constructive ways,� Smith said of the assets seized by the attorney general’s office in MIRA lawsuits. “It’s really difficult to get back on your feet.�

Indeed, that’s what Honkomp, one of Schock’s clients, first told me when I wrote about her last year. She had sold a small family property before heading to prison, netting about $19,000. It was her nest egg, meant to help her and her new baby — she gave birth in prison last year — start a new life, free of the drug habit that landed her in prison.

Honkomp’s case is scheduled for its next hearing on March 18.

Sometime before that, the Legislature could send a strong message to Judge Limbaugh if it advances Peters’ bill. The second-term representative pitches her bill as a small-government bill because it takes a law away while saving work for courts and the attorney general’s office. And the MIRA law accomplishes little for the state budget — netting about $500,000 a year — while devastating the people who lose their property.

Peters would have liked some of those folks to testify at her hearing, but the people she’s trying to help are all in prison. Most — those who don’t get lucky and find a lawyer like Schock — don’t even appear before a judge to fight for their meager assets.

Bailey’s office has filed three new MIRA cases just this month, including one against a man who, like Wallace, received a check in prison from his mother’s estate after she died. Bailey’s office has filed a lawsuit to take that money.

“How many times do we actually have a chance to shrink our government?� Peters asked her fellow lawmakers. “Our prisoners have paid their penance.�