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The founders of the Show-Me state recognized that the courts shouldn’t be used to exacerbate poverty. The sentiment shows up loud and clear in the against jailing a person because of debt. It even shows up in the early versions of a law that allows counties to charge defendants room and board for staying in jail.

The 1909 version of the law, for instance, said that “insolvent prisoners� could be discharged from their debts — and jail — if they had no property nor other means to satisfy their court costs. That year’s version of the law also allowed prisoners to bring food and bedding from home to make them more comfortable and reduce costs.

Such provisions have been erased from Missouri law, and these days, it’s not uncommon for poor people to be jailed in Missouri because they can’t afford to pay their jail bill.

“It’s horrible,� says Oxenhandler, who two years ago retired as a circuit court judge in Boone County, one of the few places in the state that doesn’t bill defendants for their jail stays.

In almost every rural county in Missouri, people who do time in jail, both before trial and after conviction, are charged “board bills� for room and board. The charges are generally around $50 a day, and when people don’t pay, they are often hauled before judges who try to collect. In many cases, , defendants are still dealing with their cases, even misdemeanors, years after they’ve served their time. They are scheduled to appear at payment review hearings every month, even more than a decade after they have pleaded guilty and spent time in jail.

In Caldwell County, Dent County, Camden County and St. Francois County, this is the norm.

• Cory Booth when he was 17 and 10 years later is still going to court month after month to pay his board bill.

• Nicholas McNab to steal candy; a decade later, he’s in more debt than when he did his jail time.

• Brooke Bergen stole an $8 mascara tube and now on a board bill.

The results can be devastating: increased poverty, long jail sentences, lost kids, cars, houses and jobs. There are stories like this in nearly every county in rural Missouri.

But there are exceptions.

Boone County is one. So are all the most urban counties in the state: both the city and county of St. Louis, Clay and Platte counties in Kansas City. Also, two tiny counties, Stoddard in the southeast and McDonald in the southwest. None charge board bills.

“It’s just not right,� Oxenhandler says, to force defendants, the vast majority of whom live in poverty, to pay for their time in jail, and then put them back behind bars when they can’t afford to pay.

In St. Charles County, a place that straddles urban and rural sensibilities, elected officials have found a balance that might serve as a guide as Missouri lawmakers consider addressing the state’s debtor prison problem.

There, defendants who have some financial means will be sent a board bill by the sheriff for county jail sentences, but not for any time they spent in jail before trial. If they pay within 30 days, the rate is cut significantly. If they don’t pay, it goes to civil collection.

But poor people are never charged in St. Charles County. The county, with the agreement of its top elected officials, doesn’t use its judicial system as a debt collector. “Our general rule of thumb is if the person is indigent — which is about 80 percent of our defendants — we don’t try to collect it,� says St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Tim Lohmar, a Republican. Last year the county collected a mere $45,000 in board bill charges, none of it through the court system. It expects to collect less than that this year.

Laclede County, with about a tenth of the population of St. Charles County, led the state in board bill collections obtained through its circuit courts, with last year.

Lohmar, who is president of the , might find himself explaining how St. Charles County deals with board bills during the 2019 session of the Missouri Legislature. That’s because at least two lawmakers have already filed bills to try to address the situation throughout the state.

One of them, , filed by Rep. Bruce DeGroot, R-Chesterfield, and cosponsored by Rep. Mark Ellebracht, D-Liberty, seeks to stop the practice of many rural judges requiring defendants who can’t afford to pay their court costs to show up in court month after month, for years in some cases, and face contempt of court charges and more jail time if they miss a hearing.

Instead, DeGroot’s bill would have the rest of the state mimic practices in St. Charles County, allowing for civil collection of past-due amounts but no more show-cause hearings and warrants issued for arrest. The state public defender’s office is also challenging this practice in several court cases.

“The practice of jailing people who cannot afford to pay for their costs while incarcerated is very close to debtors prison,� DeGroot says. “As a state we must end this practice. We are better than this.�

Indeed, the practice is “disturbing,� says Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a lawyer and researcher at the . Eisen has on the process of counties charging for jail time, and it’s not just a Missouri phenomenon. Nearly every state has some similar charge in either county or state courts, but its application differs depending on the jurisdiction.

“It creates a never-ending cycle of debt,� Eisen says. “It is criminalizing poverty. That’s what we’re doing. It’s a tax on the poor.�

In 2009, the Minnesota Supreme Court struck down a program that was operating in that state, but lawmakers there made changes to allow it to continue.

Ellebracht and DeGroot hope the Missouri Legislature goes in the opposite direction. Besides working together on a bill to address Missouri’s law, the two lawyers are in the process of setting up a nonprofit to help people across Missouri who are stuck with old board bills and can’t escape the court system because of it. “There is no room for debate on this,� Ellebracht says. “This is not a partisan issue.�

State Rep. Justin Hill, R-Lake Saint Louis, has also filed a bill, , to deal with the issue. He hopes to stop the practice of drug testing defendants who are awaiting trial on cases that have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.

That practice leads to defendants often being jailed on probation or bond-condition violations and increasing the board bills they owed the county by hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Hill’s bill also would create earned compliance in misdemeanor cases, which would reduce probation by a month for every month a defendant serves probation without a violation. The same process already exists in felony cases overseen by state probation officers.

Hill says he’s glad his home county isn’t contributing to the state’s debtors’ prison problem, and hopes it becomes a model for others to follow.

Lohmar, the St. Charles County prosecutor, agrees. He’s not sure when or why St. Charles County started doing things the way they do them. Neither are the leaders of the other counties who buck the Missouri debtors prison trend. “I’m glad we don’t try to collect board bills on poor defendants,� Lohmar says. “It’s just a bad practice.�