St. Louis County Executive Sam Page has recommended to the St. Louis County Council an impressive list of nominees for a new Justice Services Advisory Board to advise the director of the Department of Justice Services regarding the policies and operations at the County jail in Clayton.
“Recent deaths of inmates in the county’s custody prompted us to improve the Justice Center and set it on a new course,” Page said in a statement. “Appointing a new advisory board will help us identify additional reforms we can implement at the Justice Center.”
With the health (and death) of people in county custody at stake, a senior health expert was nominated: Dr. Alexander Garza, chief medical officer at SSM Health and the former assistant secretary and chief medical officer of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
With County justice services frequently targeted by protests, a protest veteran was nominated: Reverend Phillip Duvall, who helped to provoke the reopening of the Jason Stockley case, also Social Justice commissioner of the Missionary Baptist State Convention of Missouri.
A very unique and insightful former inmate, though in federal rather than county custody, was nominated: Jeff Smith, executive director of the Missouri Workforce Housing Association, former state senator and author of the memoir “Mr. Smith Goes to Prison.”
With one of the best research universities in the county footprint, a subject matter expert from Washington University was nominated: Timothy McBride, a professor at the Brown School of Social Work at and chair of the MO HealthNet Oversight Committee in the Missouri Department of Social Services.
Clearly, the voices of women engaged in relevant community work is needed, and two were nominated: Twyla Lee, an educator and active participant in Color of Change, a civil rights organization; and Mary Zabawa Taylor, a volunteer in the criminal justice ministry in the St. Louis County Justice Center and former director of Patient Safety at Washington University School of Medicine.
“These appointees are professional, thoughtful and diverse,” Page said in a statement. “We will look to this board for advice and counsel. And I will expect them to listen to our diverse community in formulating their reports.”
Duvall has a proven record of working collaboratively behind the scenes to bust open a major public safety scandal in the Stockley case, and several of the nominees have brash voices in social media, where they have highly public profiles, so this was not a safe list that Page has handed to the County Council.
