Jails

Over 35,000 people who were jailed in St. Ann between 2014 and 2021 can receive money from a $3.1 million class-action settlement. ArchCity Defenders claimed the city illegally jailing people without inquiring about their ability to make bail.

The people imprisoned were supposed to receive rehabilitative mental health services that allow them to stand trial, but they have been found to languish in jails — often for months — without having been found guilty of any crime.

Chief Judge Andrew Gleeson said the numbers may drop in the next eight weeks but he doesn’t expect that to continue. A jail spokesman said the jail population could even increase in the long term.

St. Louis is trying to reimagine what the Medium Security Institution, or the Workhouse, should be now that it has closed. Officials are asking residents, people who were once incarcerated inside the Workhouse and those in communities that surround the jail to fill out an online survey to let them know what they should do with the jail.

St. Louis activists are demanding that judges and prosecutors rely on pretrial methods that don’t call for incarceration.

Did pandemic policies that reduced jail populations lead to an increase in violent crime? Two new reports say “no.”

Ryan Krull of the Riverfront Times has been digging into the firing of a serial sexual harasser in St. Louis County’s jail.

Arch City Defenders’ “Fatal State Violence” project counted deaths occurring in jails and at the hands of police in cities from St. Louis to Jefferson County. Now it’s expanding its mission into a rapid response team.

Inmates at St. Louis’ primary jail filed a federal class-action lawsuit Tuesday accusing guards of torturing inmates with mace and depriving them of water for days.

The Department of Missouri Corrections will lift its coronavirus pandemic visitor restrictions on April 1. Visitors can see loved ones in state prisons without wearing a mask or taking a health screening test prior to entry.