ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

It’s a remarkably low number.

Just three years ago, on the same date, more than twice that many people were being held in the city’s two jails, the City Justice Center and the medium security jail known as the workhouse.

I started regularly checking jail numbers around that time, when the movement was gaining steam, urging the city to reduce the number of people held in its jails and refocus money to alleviate poverty, the mother of crime.

At the time, the head public defender in St. Louis, Mary Fox, told me to focus on the math. Even then, when there were more than 1,100 people confined in the city’s jails, the long-controversial workhouse could be closed if the city stopped holding federal detainees, she said. She was right.

In the end, the Close the Workhouse campaign mostly won. Its activists convinced the Board of Aldermen to vote to close the facility, a promise some on the board later ignored. The activists helped elect Jones, a supporter, and in one of her first acts as mayor, she zeroed out the budget for the workhouse. Later, she closed it, at least temporarily.

There are 19 detainees in that old facility today, now dubbed an annex by the city in a bit of verbal gymnastics. After closing the workhouse, the city reopened part of it once it discovered massive problems with broken locks at the downtown jail. The city has reduced population at that jail as it goes about fixing the problems.

Back to those 525 people held behind bars.

Here’s why that number is so important: The city significantly reduced its jail population without all hell breaking loose. That’s the allegation always pushed by the “tough on crime� crowd every single time criminal justice reform advocates — and not just in St. Louis — push for a reduction in incarceration in the United States, which continues to lead the world in prison population.

In Jones’ first year in office, homicides fell. There is some dispute about what the actual number of homicides in 2021 was. A raises some fair questions about how the city counts — or doesn’t count — some deaths. But everybody agrees the numbers dropped.

Fair or not, that is how mayors are judged. Every mayor in recent St. Louis history has uttered some version of the phrase “public safety is my top priority,� and they all mean it. But Jones, accelerating a trend that started under former Mayor Lyda Krewson, is the first mayor to do so while bringing the average number of daily detainees in the city jail to such a low number.

“Has locking people up and locking them out of opportunities made our city a safer place for families?� Jones asked in her speech Tuesday, calling for more investment in anti-poverty programs. “Have the gunshots stopped at night yet?�

The answer, of course, is no. They have not. So why not try something different, like reducing the jail population permanently and investing in the long-neglected neighborhoods in the city’s north and south sides? This is what “reimagining public safety,� a phrase Jones used in her speech, looks like.

There are lots of reasons why the current jail population is so low. Jones ended the contract with the federal government to hold its detainees. There has been a push during the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce the jail population to protect detainees and corrections workers. Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner has charged fewer people with crimes than her predecessors, in some cases because of management failures and in others because of a change in philosophy. Judges are, for the most part, enforcing new rules limiting use of bail passed down by the Missouri Supreme Court.

As Jones embarks on her second year, she has an advantage few mayors in St. Louis have had: Because of federal investment from both the American Rescue Plan Act and President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, Jones will have access to hundreds of millions of dollars for targeted investment to be made in this aging Midwestern city.

Then there is the $790 million settlement from the lawsuit with the National Football League and the St. Louis Rams, a bounty that must be shared with the county, but could be, if invested properly, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change what St. Louis looks like a generation from now, when some other mayor announces that the state of the city is strong.

For that dreamy scenario to take place, Jones must properly direct and manage the bounty that is at her fingertips.

“I truly believe that St. Louis is on the precipice of change, and that our brightest days are ahead if we invest these resources wisely to make a long-term impact for generations to come,� she said Tuesday at Harris-Stowe State University.

Her biggest challenge awaits.