By Katie Kull
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — The city’s downtown jail is severely understaffed, warehouses inmates with nothing to do and is taking in so many new detainees, it soon won’t be able to house them all, a report released Monday alleges.
The 21-page report from Doug Burris, who oversaw improvement at the St. Louis County jail after a series of inmate deaths, lists 35 recommendations in total.
Some reveal just how little inmates have to do — the jail doesn’t provide books or very many tablets — so detainees mostly just sit in their cells. Other findings hint at frequent troubles, like how often smoke detectors catch inmates lighting up contraband or starting fires using electrical outlets in their cells.
The city released the report Monday morning and, at the same time, announced Burris as the jail’s provisional leader, charged with fixing the very problems he uncovered.
The city’s previous jail chief, Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah, left city employment last month.
Burris said he was looking forward to making changes with the help of community leaders and city officials.
“I think we are on the verge of some great things,” he said at a news conference Monday.
For years, the city’s jail has been plagued with complaints about dismal health care, understaffing and a string of inmate deaths.
Activists and detainees’ family members said inmates are locked in their cells for as long as 23 hours at a time, only getting out for one hour a day. And attorneys have said they couldn’t get access to their clients.
Burris, who had retired as federal probation chief in eastern Missouri, was contracted by the city in December to review operations, emergency responses, staff morale and population trends at the City Justice Center, which sits on South Tucker Boulevard across the street from City Hall.
His review is wide-ranging. It notes serious problems with the holding area of the jail after people are first arrested. The large rectangular cells leave inmates with no place to sleep or sit down, and many are housed there for days at a time wearing the clothes in which they were first arrested.
Inmates do not have access to books even though they are locked in their cells for hours a day. The jail also doesn’t have enough tablets to go around, and phone calls to family members are expensive and difficult to access, too, the report says.
But the biggest concern is staffing, it says.
Since St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore took over from Kimberly M. Gardner in 2023, more people have been charged with violent crimes and are being held without bond.
Meanwhile, the number of corrections officers has fallen significantly.
Over a three-year period, Burris’ report says, corrections staff decreased by 32% while the inmate population rose by 40%.
Staff members reported having low morale, and many didn’t want to train new officers because they were so swamped with their own duties. Many new employees quit within 180 days.
On top of that, inexperienced officers were overseeing the jail’s most violent, difficult detainees. And some corrections officers were allowed to converse with their own friends or family members who were locked up.
The makeup of the inmate population makes things difficult, too, the report says. A substantial number of detainees are prescribed mental health medications. The area of the jail devoted to drug detoxification is full. The state is also facing backlogs in transporting people to the Missouri mental hospital for evaluations and treatment.
The report’s recommendations include:
* Hiring an outside agency to recruit new corrections officers and conducting a pay study to determine whether raises are needed.
* Exploring options to house detainees elsewhere if the population continues to grow.
* Working to become accredited with the American Correctional Association, which recommends best practices for jails and prisons
* Conducting a jail-wide safety assessment.
* Working with the courts and prosecutors to reduce the amount of time cases are pending.
* Partnering with outside agencies or looking for grants to improve mental health treatment and continuing that care when people leave the jail
Of those recommendations, Mayor Tishaura O. Jones picked a list of more than a dozen “immediate action items,” including picking a recruitment firm, developing an agreement with the library and creating a plan for college classes and specialized veterans programs.
Burris must carry those out within his first 60 days on the job, she said.
“We need our jail to continue to improve,” Jones said at the news conference. “I can think of no better person to take on this work than Doug Burris .”
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