Dale Glass resigns as Corrections Commissioner

Mayor reduces jail population, holds listening sessions with jail employees

St. Louis Corrections Commissioner Dale Glass on Wednesday announced his resignation, effective June 1.

While a release from St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office noted that he was not asked to resign, Jones and U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis, released statements that indicated he didn’t have much of a choice.

Jones wrote that failed leadership over the city’s jails has left a “huge mess to clean up” and promised once again to close the Workhouse within the first 100 days of her term as mayor.

“Transforming our approach…”

“Transforming our approach to public safety in St. Louis has been long overdue, and the Mayor’s bold and early leadership on this issue has been exemplary.” U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis

“Between failing locks, lackluster maintenance, and subhuman conditions for the detainees under our care, it only further justifies my promise to shut down the Workhouse within my first 100 days,” Jones wrote, in part. “We look forward to bringing effective leadership into the corrections division that can account for these issues and raise the bar on effective management and oversight of the City Justice Center.”

In her statement, Bush reiterated the deplorable conditions she and other local leaders witnessed during a tour of both the Workhouse and City Justice Center Jail late last month.

“Transforming our approach to public safety in St. Louis has been long overdue, and the Mayor’s bold and early leadership on this issue has been exemplary,” Bush wrote, in part. “We share a commitment to reducing harm in our communities and ending the cycles of trauma that have caused far too many of our neighbors to be locked up in our city’s jails.”

Since their late-April visit to both jails, Jones’ release stated that her administration has taken several actions, including reducing the jail overall population to 660 people.

In addition, the Civilian Oversight Board is collecting filed complaints within the Department of Corrections dating back to 2017. The creation of this board was the number one recommendation of a task force assembled by then-Mayor Lyda Krewson to investigate the jails’ conditions.

As for the jails’ operations, daily reports are now required regarding the delivery of meals to detainees, as well as the status of units and cells whose locks are still pending repair.

Jones and her staff have also scheduled listening sessions with Department of Corrections employees who have shared their concerns about the management of the two facilities.

There have been at least four major detainee uprisings since December — with the most recent taking place on the evening of Easter Sunday when inmates took over both the north and south side of the third floor of the City Justice Center. They broke the windows, started fires and threw debris down onto the street. 

During a press conference the next day, Glass called attention to the community support the inmates have received.

“One of the things that concerns me in these types of situations is when the first events happened, we the public appeared to be condoning or justifying or lending cause to their behavior,” he said at the time. “And I’m not judgmental about that issue, but I would say it has a tendency to embolden.”

The third uprising occurred in early February, where 117 inmates took over the north side of the fourth floor of the jail, also breaking the windows and throwing debris down onto the sidewalk and street.

After that, Jimmie Edwards, the city’s public safety director at the time, told the public that the cells’ “locks don’t necessarily lock” and that is how inmates were able to break free and overpower the correctional officer on duty.

The city approved $1.5 million to fix the locks in March, and last month Krewson said the work should be completed in May.

Two other protests occurred just before and on New Year’s Day. Each time, the inmates refused to return to their cells in protest of inadequate protections against COVID-19 for those being held there. Following each protest, groups of inmates were transferred to the Workhouse, which had been slated to be closed Dec. 31, 2020. Fifty-six people were transferred from the Justice Center to the Workhouse on Dec. 29, followed by 45 on Jan. 1.