For years, human rights advocates have warned that conditions at the St. Louis Medium Security Institution, also known as the City Workhouse, are unacceptable verging on Dickensian: violence, mold, rats, unbearable heat in summer, all in an overcrowded, half-century-old facility.
The latest chapter dropped last week, with a new report by activists reiterating many of the same points. They want the workhouse shut down. The city correctly responds that a shutdown isn't feasible, given that hundreds of inmates, many of them dangerous, are housed there and the city has nowhere else to send them.
But that doesn't exonerate the city from its responsibility to ensure the workhouse meets or exceeds all applicable state and federal safety and health standards. Current conditions amount to harsh pre-punishment for inmates who are awaiting trial and have been convicted of no crime.
Nevertheless, to just open the gates and empty the place with no further planning wouldn't be rational. City officials have offered assuring statements that they're working on it. That's not enough. Without delay, officials need to outline, in detail, what is going to be done and when.
The city has been sued repeatedly over conditions at the facility, which holds more than 500 people, most of them awaiting trial. Allegations over the years include overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, negligent medical care, rodents, insect infestations — and in one chilling allegation, guards setting up gladiator-style fights between inmates.
On Thursday, the activist group Close the Workhouse issued a report urging officials to do just that — close it — recounting the years of problems.
"What we're talking about isn't a broken toilet or some mold on one wall," Rebecca Gorley, a spokesperson for the campaign and for the nonprofit civil rights law firm ArchCity Defenders, told the Post-Dispatch. "Everyone we've talked to who has been in the workhouse echoes the same horror stories over and over."
The report, citing interviews with inmates, calls the conditions "unspeakably hellish."
Mayor Lyda Krewson's administration says it is addressing the overcrowding problem by trying to route inmates suspected of nonviolent crimes or bail violations away from incarceration.
The city also notes that it has earmarked $6.5 million from the Prop 1 bond issue voters approved in August, which will be used for repairs and upgrades to the workhouse and other correctional facilities. Among the promised projects is permanent air conditioning, the lack of which has been a consistent source of controversy at the workhouse.
Plaintiffs and activists are understandably skeptical after so many years of unaddressed issues, but the bond issue is an essential first step toward addressing their concerns before resorting to the drastic option of shuttering the facility altogether. Krewson and other officials should provide details and a timetable of what they're doing, when, to address them.
REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
View Comments