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Pope is confined in the Southeast Missouri Correctional Center in Charleston on a 12-year sentence for felony robbery and weapons charges. He was part of a crew of men arrested in 2019 for a series of robberies on the MetroLink.

During the time Pope was held in the St. Louis Justice Center, before he pleaded guilty to reduced charges, he was attacked by a guard who “forcefully struck and jabbed Mr. Pope multiple times about his body with a broom handle,� according to court records.

The attack was caught on video. Pope filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court that was eventually settled. In December, Pope’s attorney sent him a $12,000 check from the settlement to be deposited into Pope’s corrections account.

A couple of weeks later, Bailey’s office filed a lawsuit in Cole County, seeking to obtain the check to pay for the cost of Pope’s incarceration. The lawsuit was filed under the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, which allows the attorney general to sue incarcerated people under certain circumstances. The goal is to garnish income to pay for the time spent behind bars. It’s part of the nation’s patchwork of “pay-to-stay� laws that often exacerbate the poverty of defendants.

Every state but two — Nevada and Connecticut — have such laws. Most, like Missouri’s, were passed in the late 1980s, when a surge of “tough-on-crime� laws fueled a massive rise in jail populations and lawmakers were looking for new sources to help pay for new prisons.

But the laws have not fulfilled their promise. In the past four years, for instance, Missouri’s law has not produced more than about $500,000 in the attorney general’s slush fund, which gets 20% of the money collected from people in state prisons. Most of the people targeted — like Pope — are only sued because of a small windfall.

So it was when former Attorney General William Webster first used the law in 1990 to collect money from state detainees who had won settlements after being attacked by prison guards. In one of those cases, however, the federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that for the state to take settlement money won by someone through a federal lawsuit. The court argued that people in state prison would have no avenue to be compensated should their civil rights be violated.

“If the state were permitted to seize the ... damage awards prisoners received for prison employees’ conduct, the prisoners would have no motive to bring such suits and the State and its employees would have no inducement to comply with federal law,� the appeals court wrote in 1990.

But that case likely doesn’t apply to Pope because he was attacked in a city jail, not a state prison, says Washington University law professor Peter Joy.

Still, Joy says, Pope can make a “good argument� that Bailey’s lawsuit undermines federal civil rights law.

If Pope is to make that argument, he’ll do so without an attorney.

That’s because in reimbursement lawsuits, the public defender’s office — which represented Pope in his criminal case — can’t intervene. Pope has filed a handwritten letter with the court asking that his settlement be protected and “non-recoverable.�

“I never own anything in my life,� Pope told the court.

If successful, Bailey’s lawsuit would make sure that remains the case.

Lisa Foster, a former California judge who is co-director of the nonprofit , finds such lawsuits “really offensive.�

“Unfortunately, Missouri is not alone in doing this,� Foster says. “For some reason, there seems to be an uptick in these. I don’t know if it’s state attorneys general talking to each other, or something else.�

The lawsuits often go unnoticed because they target people who committed serious crimes, who have no family to advocate for them, and who are otherwise not empathetic. The system, though, envisions people like Pope some day returning to live in their communities. And the state makes their ability to get housing, jobs and health care much more difficult when it tries to collect costs related to their stays in jail.

“Prison is not a Motel 6,� Foster says. “You shouldn’t be paying for the privilege of being locked up.�

Bailey, who didn’t respond to a request for an interview, apparently disagrees. He has filed two other lawsuits this year seeking reimbursement from Missouri men. Both of those men received small court settlements from insurance proceeds following the deaths of their mothers. One of them, Daniel Wayne Wallace, wrote a letter to the court asking to block Bailey’s action.

“It is the only time I will receive any large amount of money ever,� Wallace wrote about the check for about $12,000 he received after his mom died.

The money, he said, is supposed to help him rebuild his life when he leaves prison: “I fully intend on fighting tooth and nail in court to stop this travesty of justice.�