Mayor Lyda Krewson recently tweeted a statement in support of the conditions and functioning of the city’s Medium Security Institution, better known as the Workhouse. But we were not convinced.
On October 7, St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards invited a group of local clergy to tour the Workhouse. We were invited as known faith leaders who had been speaking out in support of the Close the Workhouse campaign, so that Edwards might, with such a tour, persuade us to see the value and importance of the Workhouse. We went on the tour, we listened to the presentation, we asked questions and more questions, but we were not convinced.
We saw a deteriorating physical plant with endemic infrastructural problems in its plumbing, heating, and cooling. We heard that it is maintained in part by incarcerated people (the vast majority of whom are poor and people of color) who earn less than 50 cents an hour for their work.
We heard from our tour leader misogynistic, inflammatory rhetoric about the women in the workhouse, that we would avoid their unit because they are the “worst of the worst” and so “mentally unstable” that they might “remove their clothes” and act out “sexually” in front of the clergy.
We were outraged that an official responsible for the Workhouse would speak this way, and when we did visit with the women in their unit, we noted – as they sat pleasantly at tables with one another and nodded in our direction – that their behavior in no way matched the way they had been characterized.
We met clearly hard-working and dedicated staff at the Workhouse, who were excited to share about new programs they were offering individuals, but what we saw and heard on the tour gave us no confidence that it is a viable or well-managed (at the top level) institution of public safety in St. Louis.
Despite an effort to give us an up-close look to persuade us into support, with all of that touring, and all of that talking, we were not convinced.
The tour didn’t address our moral concerns with the cash bail system. The tour didn’t address the funding issue of maintaining two separate institutions of incarceration in the city. The tour didn’t address our concerns about racism in the system of mass incarceration in our city. The tour didn’t address how we might better spend that funding on affordable housing, job training, mental health care, and addiction and substance abuse services. The tour didn’t give us any confidence that the city’s leadership was open to questions, ideas, or suggestions about either public safety or Workhouse issues.
We are not convinced.Â
Through our experience on the tour and what we have learned in studying its history and current reality, and especially through conversations with individuals who’ve spent time in the Workhouse, we see that closing the Workhouse is a moral issue that will lead to greater public safety for St Louis. It’s time to reimagine public safety and address crime by addressing our racist practices of policing and incarceration and the root causes of crime in poverty.
Here is some context:
- 90 percent of those detained are people of color while only 49 percent of the city is black.
- Â It costs $16 million to maintain the Workhouse each year regardless of the occupancy.
- The policies of arrest and incarcerate have not made our city safer. The unconstitutional cash-bond system destabilizes families, neighborhoods and communities and grows crime.
- St. Louis spends $200 million annually on arresting and incarcerating people and less than $1.6 million on human services.
We are calling on our mayor, our circuit attorney, our Public Safety director and our Board of Alders:
- To release individuals now held for nonviolent crimes because they are too poor to post bond.
- To close the Workhouse.
- To reinvest in the people who make up our community including those who hold jobs at the Workhouse.
As religious leaders committed to joining God’s redemptive work in the world, as people of faith who saw the Workhouse up close, we call upon the people of St. Louis to join us in the ongoing efforts of the community-driven Campaign to Close the Workhouse to bring us one step closer to a safer and more just St. Louis. #closetheworkhouse
Rev. Erin Counihan is pastor at Oak Hill Presbyterian Church, Rev. Cassandra Gould is executive director of Missouri Faith Voices, Rev. Deb Krause is president and professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, and Rabbi Susan Talve is rabbi at Central Reform Congregation.
