In 1957, after a riot at the MIssouri State Penitentiary left four men dead and 50 wounded, state lawmakers created a bipartisan committee to keep watch over the prison system.

The 12 members of the Joint Committee on Correctional Institutions and Problems had two important duties — inspect every prison at least twice a year and prepare a report on their findings for the General Assembly.

In 1981, for example, the report highlighted overcrowding, lack of proper mental health care and inadequate staffing.

The committee, later renamed the Joint Committee on Corrections, lasted until 2015, when it was abolished in a bill that also eliminated several other joint committees.

This year, with in-custody deaths at their highest level in state history and watchdogs warning prisons are overrun with drugs, three lawmakers — two Republican and one Democrat — have filed bills creating a new oversight panel with duties mirroring those given to the joint committee almost 60 years ago.

With the help of the national prison advocacy group FAMM, a coalition of state and national liberal and conservative groups are pressing for Missouri to join the 19 states and the District of Columbia with an independent prison oversight board.

“Until it’s transparent, until we know what’s happening, until there’s some type of oversight and some accountability and transparency, I can’t trust (the Department of Corrections) to hold themselves accountable,” said Michelle Smith, director of the Missouri Justice Coalition.

There would be four legislators — two members of the Senate and two from the House — on the Corrections Oversight Committee, along with eight members appointed by the governor. The governor’s appointees would have to include a former corrections officer, a man and a woman who were previously incarcerated and a family member of a person currently incarcerated. 

The committee would hire and work with an independent corrections ombudsman to investigate complaints, conduct inspections and issue regular reports on conditions in the Department of Corrections.

“There’s a lot of room for improvement,” said state Rep. Bill Lucas, a DeSoto Republican elected to his first term in November. “And that is not at all talking down on the fine correctional officers who are doing their job and who are dedicated and have principles.”

Lucas has a perspective on the state prison system that no other legislator has — he served a sentence for a 1996 conviction for sale of a controlled substance. He’s a lawmaker now because his criminal history was expunged under a law that allows non-violent offenders to clear their records seven years after completing their sentence.

While incarcerated at the Tipton Correctional Center, Lucas said he endured a dental procedure to repair a broken filling without anaesthetic because the dentist’s hands were shaking so much he refused to allow him to give him a shot of novocaine. 

“He shouldn’t have been a dentist anywhere,” Lucas said.

Along with Lucas, the oversight bills have been filed by state Reps. Bill Allen, a Kansas City Republican, and Kimberly-Ann Collins, a St. Louis Democrat.

Allen said he’s making the bill his priority legislation for the year.

“There is no doubt that the men and women of (the Department of Corrections), on the whole, do a good job,” Allen said. “It is also clear to everybody who has been following these prison deaths that much more needs to be done, much more oversight has to get done.”

Collins has made using her legislative privilege of inspecting any prison without advance notice a major part of her work.

She says she’s seen firsthand the issues needing attention in the department. Creating the oversight committee and ombudsman, she said, will do the work she cannot do alone. 

“It gives it a second set of eyes,” Collins said, “and gives them the ability to cross things and examine things that I may have missed because I’m just one person.” 

The department isn’t taking a position on the proposals, spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said.

“We’ve expanded our investigative capabilities in the past year, and in preceding years, we established and built out a robust Office of Professional Standards,” Pojmann said. “So the department certainly has a significant amount of administrative oversight in place.”

Preliminary figures show 139 people died while in custody of the department last year, the most ever and a continuation of a trend that has averaged more than 10 deaths a month for the past five years.

Most of the deaths are due to disease, an issue that reflects an aging prison population. But it also reflects issues with medical care, advocates for oversight said.

“We have heard overwhelmingly from people that live in the prisons and the people that are supposed to be able to take care of them that they’re not able to do that,” said Lori Curry, director of Missouri Prison Reform. “People are not receiving treatment for basic things all the way up to severe things.”

A visit to a prison geriatric facility during his freshman tour in 2022 vividly demonstrated the issue of aging prisoners, Allen said.

“There are hundreds of prisoners who can’t feed themselves, bathe themselves, or clothe themselves,” Allen said. “And we are hiring aides for each of these people to help them do the daily basics. And it just moved me. It completely changed my outlook.”

Of a population listed at 23,595, there were 2,282 inmates older than 60, including 413 older than 70, in state custody in 2023.

One of Allen’s first bills when he took office in 2023 would have speeded up the release of incarcerated people over 60 who had not committed a dangerous felony.

He has continued to file the bill along with the proposal for greater oversight.

Collins also has a bill addressing parole for older inmates.

“Those individuals should be able to die with human dignity in the comfort of their own home,” Collins said. “We know that they won’t reoffend anymore, because it’s almost impossible for you to reoffend if you’re walking around with an oxygen tank.”

But aging and disease aren’t the only reasons deaths have risen dramatically despite a decrease in total population. Drug overdoses are an increasing cause, along with violent deaths and suicides.

Prison oversight

When Missouri established its first prison, the General Assembly gave its members, and selected state officers, responsibility for overseeing its operations.

The treasurer, auditor and attorney general were designated as the Board of Inspectors, responsible for reporting on its operations to the legislature. And the 1832 statute creating a state penitentiary included a provision for lawmakers, statewide elected officials, judges of the supreme and circuit courts, and selected others, to visit the prison “at pleasure” to inspect its operations. 

The only significant change to the text since then has been to replace “at pleasure” with the words “at any time.”

As a new legislator in 2021, Collins encountered resistance as she tried to exercise that privilege at the Eastern Reception and Diagnostic Center in Bonne Terre on the day Ernest Johnson was executed. Barred from entering the prison that day, she has continued to make her personal inspections and said she has made more than 400 visits to the 19 institutions.

“Imagine if 163 of us went into 19 correctional facilities, all the work that would get done,” Collins said.

There are also positive things happening in the department, she said. 

A program called Dynamo is for long-term prisoners older than 50 who are given more control over their movements and more responsibility for upkeep of their cells and recreation area. The idea, Collins said, is “to give them more of a home setting on the inside and not feel so criminalized by guards.”

Other positives are a new training center for corrections officers and a new prison nursery, opening soon, where women who give birth while incarcerated can keep their babies with them.

But Collins said her focus is the stack of complaints and requests for help on her hands as she has become known as the legislator who visits the prisons. 

“I’ve got a backlog of requests of people sending me letters and requests of different medical issues and or different things that have happened inside the facilities,” Collins said.

The 1954 riot at the state penitentiary began when two prisoners feigned illness, overpowered responding guards and started opening cells. The breakout grew until the prison was under the control of its 2,500 inmates, who set prison shops on fire and only withdrew from the prison yard under the fire of machine guns.

State troopers, National Guard soldiers and police from St. Louis and Kansas City were brought in to suppress the riot, which caused an estimated $5 million damage.

The job of the joint committee established in 1957 was to make “a continuing study of the internal organization, management, powers, duties and functions of the department and its correctional centers…”

Neither Lucas nor Allen had ever heard of the committee, or its functions, before being interviewed by The Independent.

“This is one of the detriments of term limits,” Allen said. “No legislators here know what happened, that we used to even have this.”

The push for state prison oversight boards is a national effort, said Maria Goellner, senior director of State Policy for FAMM.

“There is a gap that desperately needs to be filled” in Missouri, Goellner said.

The ombudsman office would be funded outside the regular budget of the department, but the potential for savings is large, she said.

Prison medical, mental health and substance abuse services are listed among the issues the new oversight program would monitor. The legislation also directs the program to review sanitation, nutrition, living conditions including temperatures, violence, abuse, threats, neglect, civil rights and access to visits and communication with family.

The ombudsman would inspect each facility at least once a year and report on the findings. An annual report would summarize the outcome of investigations and inspections, and provide data on deaths, physical and sexual assaults, lockdowns, staffing and pending or settled legal actions against the department.

“This isn’t a case of creating more bureaucracy,” Goellner said. “This is a case where the state has a massive bureaucracy that impacts tens of thousands of people, and it needs more attention and care paid to it.”

The oversight responsibilities would not replace the department’s internal systems, Lucas said. But internal reviews and investigations should not be accepted as final, he added.

“Just as a general rule, not just corrections, just as a general rule, I don’t put much stock in internal investigations,” Lucas said.

Empower Missouri, a social justice advocacy group founded in 1901, tracks legal settlements and jury awards from lawsuits filed against the department. Since the start of 2020, its figures show, the state has paid out about $70 million in 139 lawsuits, including $51 million toward a $100 million settlement of correction officer claims they were not credited with work time for pre- and post-shift activities required for their jobs.

“The sheer volume of lawsuits and payouts shows that their internal system isn’t working and that an independent oversight body is really needed,” said Mallory Rusch, Empower Missouri’s executive director.

The department’s appropriation for the current fiscal year is $971 million, with $884 million from general revenue.

Better oversight of prisons has multiple advantages, Rusch said.

“It’s about so much more than just protecting people who are detained in these facilities,” she said. “It’s about protecting staff in the facilities. It’s about protecting contractors who work in the facilities. And at the end of the day, it’s about making sure that we are spending our taxpayer dollars in a reasonable way.”

Missouri prison agency to pay $60K for Sunshine Law violations over inmate death records

The Empower Missouri list does not include $60,000 awarded for attorney fees in a Sunshine Law violation case to the mother of an inmate who hanged himself in his cell at the Southeast Correctional Center in Charleston. 

And the prospect of an even larger award looms in that case, where the department is being sued for wrongful death.  Wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits in the recent deaths of two other prisoners tied to the actions of corrections officers are also pending.

“The entire reason for an independent oversight body is to catch problems before they bloom to the stage where they become fodder for lawsuits, and also just help to identify where you have bad actors in the system,” Rusch said.

The ombudsman’s office and oversight committee should be independent of, but not in opposition to, the department administration, Goellner said. 

“The ombuds office in many states works very, very closely with the corrections department, and they’re able to actually often prevent issues before they get bigger, so that they don’t become lawsuits, so that it doesn’t become irreparable harm,” she said.

The 24,000 inmates and 10,000 employees, plus their networks of family and friends, make conditions in the department a personal issue for many, Goellner said. And how conditions impact those populations is a public safety issue.

“What happens in there ripples out into the lives of the correctional officers who work there and into the lives of the 90% of incarcerated people who will get out one day,” she said.

The bills filed by Allen and Lucas would put additional steps into the selection of the department director, who is currently chosen by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.

Thirty days before the governor selects a director, the names and email addresses of the applicants would have to be made public. Following the appointment, a hearing with public comment would be required.

When a new chief administrator is needed for a department facility, the director would hold a meeting of facility staff and employee association representatives where potential candidates would be excluded.

“The director shall accept comments and input on the suitability of any candidate for the position of chief administrative officer and shall take into consideration such input when making an appointment decision” the bills state.

Trevor Foley was appointed acting director in October 2023 and is Gov. Mike Kehoe’s choice for the job. No date has been set for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Gubernatorial Appointments Committee.

The committee should explore Foley’s views on how to balance the punishment side of corrections with better conditions for staff and incarcerated people, Lucas said.

“I want to know about — I don’t know how you would phrase questions — that determines their level of compassion, or their strict adherence to justice,” Lucas said. “You know, there’s got to be a balance.”

Foley was previously Senate Appropriations staff director and budget officer for the department before the resignation of Anne Precythe, appointed as corrections director by former Gov. Eric Greitens.

The change of leadership has made a positive difference in her relationship with the department, Collins said. Precythe wouldn’t communicate and made visiting prisons difficult, she said, while Foley is encouraging it.

“Trevor’s like, ‘go, go, and if you have any issues, call me,’ and so I don’t believe that the department has an issue with us doing oversight,” Collins said.

With bipartisan support, the time is ripe for the oversight bill, Allen said.

“Both sides recognize this and both sides want to do something about it,” he said. “This is our opportunity. Especially in a non-election year, this is the time to get this done.”