Tony Messenger
Metro columnist
Alicyn Rapp was dropped off in the shadow of the big red barn in Camdenton, the one that houses a souvenir and T-shirt shop at the intersection of Missouri Highways 5 and 54.
“I had no money, no car and no phone,†Rapp remembers. “I had no way to get back home to St. Louis. I was stranded.â€
A stranger bought her a hot dog at Sonic and let her use her phone. Her dad would be able to come get her in a couple of days. She found a cheap motel and the good Samaritan paid for her room.
That was in July.
Rapp, 36, had just been let out of Camden County Jail. She had been picked up on a warrant from a case for which she long ago served her time. Her troubles stemmed from a bad breakup.
In 2006.
Rapp believes she might have the oldest ongoing case in Camden County. She met a guy that summer at Lake of the Ozarks. Things moved fast. She moved in with him in the loft above his window-tinting business. They drank a lot. They fought. Then he cheated on her. That’s what the police report says. It also says she hit him and trashed his loft. Rapp says he hit her first. Police charged her with domestic violence and property damage, both misdemeanors.
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A warrant was issued for her arrest, but Rapp had already moved back to St. Louis, where she grew up.
She’s a south city Catholic girl. There was St. Gabriel’s for elementary and middle school, followed by Bishop DuBourg for high school.
By the age of 14, she was fighting addiction, mostly alcohol and meth. In 2004, she caught her first drug possession case and went to prison. Since then, she’s done three stints in prison — all for drug possession — and has found herself in nine different county jails.
Only one case remains on her record. Camden County.
She was arrested in 2007, went through a couple of attorneys and by 2008 pleaded guilty. Her sentence was one year in jail, but it was suspended. She received two years of probation and a bill for the nine days she spent in jail. Altogether, her court costs came to about $1,200.
By 2009, Rapp was behind in her payments and the court revoked her probation. She did a couple of days in jail and her cash bond of $400 was applied to her costs. Then again in 2010. Revocation. Jail. Another bill for jail time. And 2012.
This is the pattern that creates de facto . Poor people who can’t afford to pay their costs — even after doing their time on misdemeanor charges — end up with even larger bills by spending more time in jail on probation revocation or contempt of court for missing hearings. Camden County collects more in so-called except for neighboring Laclede County. The practice has earned the lake area jail there a motto often repeated by its inmates.
“It’s legendary,†says Rapp. “Come on vacation, leave on probation, come back on revocation.â€
Since 2006, this has been Rapp’s life.
In 2013, she tried to put an end to the cycle. She was in the Chillicothe Correctional Center, doing 120 days for possession of meth, and she was trying to turn her life around. Her record has been clean since then, though she knows her battle with addiction will last a life time.
“I am writing you requesting time served in lieu of fines and/or jail time to run concurrent with my current sentence …†Rapp wrote the Camden County Circuit Court. “I am trying to change my life and I would like a clean slate to start over.â€
The prosecutor in Camden County was willing to grant the request. The judge said no, not unless Rapp also paid the $1,639.70 in outstanding bills.
So when Rapp walked out of prison, she was picked up by Camden County deputies, who drove her back to the county jail, and then added a bill for mileage to her ever increasing jail costs.
In 2015, still behind in payments, she got picked up again.
“I sat in Camden County Jail for 18 days, waiting to go to court just for them to release me with a new payment schedule,†she says. “It’s ridiculous.â€
On Monday, she had a court date again to discuss her payments with the judge, the fifth one to handle her case since it began in 2006. She didn’t go.
She is living with her husband in Woodson Terrace these days. Her car doesn’t work. Next week she starts training for a job with Jack in the Box. The idea of scraping together the money to find a way to make it to Camden County just to tell the judge she can’t afford a payment makes no sense to her.
“It’s been 12 years, for God’s sake,†Rapp says. “I’ve lost jobs, my house, cars, my children. I’ve done enough time. I’ve paid them enough money. With this hanging over my head, I’m never going to get a clean start. When is it going to stop?â€
Jailed for being poor is Missouri epidemic: A series of columns from Tony Messenger
Tony Messenger has written about Missouri cases where people were charged for their time in jail or on probation, then owe more money than their fines or court costs.Â
The Pulitzer Prize board considered these columns when it decided to award the prize for commentary to metro columnist Tony Messenger.Â
In a twist of irony, one judge no longer calls them “payment review hearings.†Instead, he’s even more direct. Now they are called “debt colle…
“The jail is emptying out. People that do come in are able to bond out quickly. None of the girls here are being held for financial reasons. T…
In a case of civil contempt — such as when a judge jails a reporter for not revealing a source, or an attorney for failing to follow an order …
Even with the state’s top court making progress in eradicating the practice of putting people in jail because they can’t afford to be in jail,…
“There are a pile of cases where people owe us money,†the judge told the defendant, a painter, who said he was having a hard time finding wor…
No longer, the court said in one voice, can judges in Missouri threaten indigent defendants with jail time for their inability to be able to a…
Disparate treatment of people charged with crimes offers a glimpse into a fundamental problem in the application of criminal justice in Missou…
Weiss wants the Legislature to make it illegal for counties to charge defendants for their time behind bars.
“How can they cancel a court date then issue a warrant without even telling you the new court date?†Sharp wonders.
His bill would stop the practice in ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ of state police agencies avoiding state jurisdiction by seeking asset forfeiture under guise of f…
"He sat in jail because he was poor," public defender Matthew Mueller said of his client.
The two defendants are Exhibits A and B of why Missouri has become the front line in a national war on poverty and the courts.
She knows what she did was wrong. She knows she should have been punished.
“It's been a hard road,†she told me recently. “Really hard.â€
For decades, Missouri’s corrections budget has been rising. So has its prison population, with a “tough on crime†philosophy filling prisons w…
“We’re hamstringing the very people who we want to go out and get a job,†Lummus says. “It’s self-defeating.â€
In his regular appearance on the McGraw Milhaven show on KTRS radio, Metro columnist Tony Messenger discusses his ongoing debtors' prison series.
He did his time. Then he got the bill: $3,150 for his stay behind bars.
A year-end update on some of the cases Tony Messenger wrote about during 2018.
The primary difference between the poor people who have been “terrorized†in Edmundson or Jennings or Ferguson, compared with those in Salem a…
The Court of Appeals in the Western District of Missouri determined that the practice of using the courts to try to collect board bills is ill…
Some counties in Missouri don't charge board bills. Those include the most urban counties in the state: both the city and county of St. Louis,…
I did my time and then some. This is how they get people. They keep them on probation and then if they don't pay their board bill they violate…
By 2009, Rapp was behind in her payments and the court revoked her probation. She did a couple of days in jail and her cash bond of $400 was a…
Every week in Missouri, a judge somewhere holds a crowded docket to collect room and board from people who were recently in jail. The judges c…
“I don’t see why he has to keep going to court every month,†she says. Sharon uses her Social Security income to try to keep him out of jail. …
Because Precious Jones was late to jail, prosecutor and judge seek to add to her sentence.
The Missouri Supreme Court and Missouri Legislature should revisit their 2015 and 2016 efforts to reform courts. More work is necessary.
Other than now being required to meet federal standards for that drug testing, private probation companies face nearly no oversight in Missour…
“I messed up on probation,†he says. “It was my fault.†Still, he doesn’t think it makes sense that he’s still hauled to court once a month wi…
Murr owed Dent County about $4,000 for her “board bill†for the 95 days she had been jailed.
The domestic violence victim, Gaddis says, wouldn’t make a report to police because she feared going to jail herself and losing her child.Â
“They make you jump through hoops,†Bote says, “and then they keep moving the hoops higher.â€
William Everts stole from a church. Almost immediately, he knew it was a bad idea.
Bergen has the sort of back story that would inspire one of the movies or television episodes based in the Ozarks that seem to be all the rage…
Clark ended up spending 495 days in county jail awaiting a trial that still hasn’t come.
Pritchett first called me last year, after I wrote about a St. Francois County woman who was sent to prison for failing to pay court costs. He…
Rob Hopple had been in jail since May after falling behind on payments on an ankle bracelet. Court dates kept coming and going, with the prose…
The bills are that high because the two criminal defendants couldn’t afford to pay for an initial sentence behind bars for relatively minor of…
“The practical reality is that people are being arrested for being poor,†Mueller says. “And there’s nothing they can do about it. They just s…
At least twice in recent years, the Missouri Supreme Court has overturned harsh sentences issued by a judge after she sent people to prison so…
Branson, in early 2018, was in Desloge, Mo., now, living with her 15-year-old son, checking in with her parole officer, hoping never to go bac…
Officially, Victoria Branson’s probation was revoked because she never paid the state the past due support and the court costs, which rang up …
