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ST. LOUIS — Imagine being in prison and you don’t have any support on the outside. Family died or they don’t want anything to do with you.

You squirrel away savings to buy an occasional honey bun.

Daniel Wayne Wallace, 35, isn’t that kind of inmate, but he might be soon.

When he’s not in jail or prison, he lives in Sedalia, Missouri. His mother, Robin, used to talk to him by phone and send a little spending money every month. Then, in 2023, she died in a car crash.

Robin’s life insurance policy left each of her grown children with about $12,500, including Daniel, who is more than three years into serving a 12-year sentence for assault, armed criminal action and unlawful possession and use of a firearm. After some struggle to cash the check, it was deposited into his Missouri Department of Corrections bank account.

“I was able to get my TV and my clothes and all that stuff,� Daniel said by telephone from Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green.

Though he doesn’t go before the Board of Probation and Parole until 2030, he said he wants to use a chunk of the money to get on his feet once he’s back in the real world.

“I don’t have nowhere to go when I get out,� he said. “I was going to use that money for a start.�

The office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — former general counsel for the Missouri Department of Corrections — has different plans.

According to a January petition filed in Cole County Circuit Court, Assistant Attorney General Drake Murdock wants the funds to pay for Daniel’s incarceration, which allegedly amounts to $157,628.50.

“Defendant continues to accrue costs,� Murdock, citing the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, argued in court records.

Daniel said the state seized about 90% of his remaining balance in February. Now, if he wants it, he must prove why he should get it back.

According to Daniel’s handwritten response submitted to the court March 5, he described the situation as a “travesty of justice� that he intends to fight “tooth and nail.�

The “State of Missouri has no ground to (seize) my money or assets of $9,681.62 due to it’s from a life insurance policy from my deceased Mother,� he argued.

He says he’s forced to play on an uneven playing field.

“(T)his venue will show extreme Bias in the favor of the State of Missouri and Missouri Department of Corrections,� he wrote

He argued that it doesn’t cost $157,628.50 to house one inmate for 42 months.

“A person on the street would have to make $46,000 in 1 year every year to even come close to paying that debt off,� he wrote to the court.

Karen Pojmann, spokeswoman for the corrections department, said they don’t have a “room and board� cost associated with incarceration because there are so many variables involved such as health care, education and security. Generally, she said, it costs a little less than $100 a day to incarcerate one person in a Missouri state prison.

She said the department will seek to collect child support, victim compensation and court costs from inmates. In a recent year, she said the attorney general recouped about $300,000 from inmates to help cover costs of incarceration.

“They do that at their own discretion,� Pojmann said by telephone.

She said no money from government stimulus payments to inmates was seized to cover costs of incarceration.

Now that Daniel’s mother has died, his 34-year-old sister, Amber, is his power of attorney.

The single mother of four has a lot on her plate, taking care of her mother’s death while trying to help a challenging sibling survive prison. She said Daniel brought hardship to their family and himself by making years of poor choices that kept him in an orbit of drugs and thugs.

“My brother is a troublemaker. He doesn’t have his head straight on his shoulders,� Amber said by telephone. “I love him to death, but he could do better than he does. He wasn’t raised the way he is acting. Once you get in that vicious cycle with those people, it never stops.�

She said he’s been incarcerated on and off since he was a teenager.

“It probably actually hurt him,� she said. “I do not think my brother knows how to function outside of prison.�

As his legal agent, she said she was initially going to deposit Daniel’s cut of the life insurance policy in her bank account so she could send him money every month. She said the bank wouldn’t accept the check without valid identification from Daniel. A prison ID wouldn’t work. Among his crimes, Daniel had previously been accused of driving without a valid driver’s license.

Ultimately, Amber said she called the corrections department central office in Jefferson City and was told she could deposit the check in her brother’s prison account. He could then transfer the money back to her for monthly disbursement.

But the AG’s office pounced.

Amber, a self-taught HVAC technician, also wants the money back. She said Daniel doesn’t have a viable home plan when he gets out, and he already owes her about $1,000.

“I really could use that right now,� she said.