ST. LOUIS • Mayor Lyda Krewson declared Thursday that the oft-criticized St. Louis Medium Security Institution, commonly known as the City Workhouse, is still needed despite a sharp drop in prisoners in the city correctional system in recent years.
She and her public safety director, Jimmie Edwards, asserted that the city’s much newer main jail downtown just doesn’t have enough room to house all such detainees now.
Edwards added that prisoner counts potentially could increase again if various initiatives that have helped reduce the pretrial jailing of people charged with nonviolent felonies are cut back.
For example, he said, a nonprofit organization’s efforts to cover bail for some prisoners could conceivably have less money available at some point in the future.
“For right now, today, we don’t think closing the workhouse would be the responsible thing to do,†the mayor said in a meeting with Post-Dispatch editorial writers and other staffers.
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Krewson and Edwards spoke following the high-profile addition of Comptroller Darlene Green earlier this week to the campaign to close the 53-year-old facility on Hall Street.
Green, in a letter to the manager of the Close the Workhouse campaign, said the facility is obsolete and that its closure could be completed in a matter of months “with focus from†the mayor’s administration.
Krewson noted that the number held in the two city facilities had dropped from about 1,400 when she took office to 1,046 this week.
“We’ve done that, truthfully, through focusing on that,†she said, working with judges, the circuit attorney’s office and others.
Green and Krewson are among the three members of the city’s chief fiscal body, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which will begin deliberations Tuesday on a new city budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
The third board member, Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, could not be reached for comment on the issue Thursday. In the past, he has said addressing criminal justice reform is not as simple as closing a building.
For decades the workhouse has been the subject of lawsuits complaining about conditions there, including one filed in 2017 alleging inadequate ventilation, medical care and sanitation. The federal lawsuit is still pending.
Edwards asserted Thursday that although the facility was old, it wasn’t inhumane and that many criticisms being made now were simply out of date.
“I’m here to tell you that those things don’t exist,†he said. “We have better accountability of the people that are working there. There are no gladiator fights, there are no broken toilets, there are no rats.â€
He also said that “there is not a current, reasonable and accurate argument for closure of that space at this time other than it’s old.†They added that part of the workhouse was newer.
Krewson and Edwards also disputed arguments that space could be freed up in the downtown jail if the city stopped housing about 200 federal prisoners there for a fee.
They said the federal prisoners were people the city wanted charged with federal gun crimes because the circuit attorney’s office wouldn’t prosecute them on state gun charges in addition to related offenses.
If the federal prosecutors hadn’t filed the gun charges, the two said, the circuit attorney would probably have charged them just with the other offenses and they would be in the city jail anyway.
Pushing back was Mary Fox, who heads the public defender’s office in St. Louis.
“It is inhumane,†she said of the workhouse in a telephone interview. “We have had attorneys sitting and talking to clients when cockroaches have been walking across the table.â€
She also said prisoners also had told her staffers about roaches in food and mold on walls.
Fox added that the nonprofit bail group, which is based in New York, was healthy financially. She said it was more realistic to expect that it would increase its involvement here.
She also disputed Edwards and Krewson’s point about the federal prisoners.
She said that regardless of the particular charges, the federal government could arrange for them to be housed in other jails across the region as they did with other inmates. “They don’t have to be in our jail,†Fox said.
Krewson said the workhouse, which has a capacity of 1,138 inmates, had 343 on Wednesday. She said the downtown jail, which opened in 2002, had a capacity of 860 and had 703 prisoners on Wednesday.
But Corrections Commissioner Dale Glass noted that the numbers were complicated by rules requiring separation of men and women prisoners and of others.
“We look at issues like (prisoners who are) enemies, co-defendants, predators, victims,†said Glass, who also was at the meeting with Post-Dispatch staffers.
Because of those policies, Krewson said, only 719 spots in the downtown jail are available for the general jail population. She said 623 of those were filled Wednesday.
