Susan Pendergrass speaks with Thomas C. Albus, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, about public safety and criminal justice reform in the St. Louis region. They discuss the limits of risk assessment tools in bail decisions, why the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County have such different homicide rates, the case for judicial discretion over algorithmic recommendations, the connection between education, social capital, and crime, and more.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:02):
Thank you so much for joining us, Tom Albus, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. The Show-Me Institute, in the last year or so, we’ve been digging into the issues of public safety and criminal justice reform, because one of our goals is to make Missouri a growth state where people want to raise their families and businesses want to come and open. Clearly, if our cities are perceived as being a place where you can’t walk to your car at night and put your groceries away, then people won’t want to do that. We’ve been trying to understand what’s going on mostly in the St. Louis metropolitan area and have realized that a lot of the issue is a disconnect between what’s actually happening and people’s perceptions. People just perceive St. Louis as a dangerous city. I did a podcast recently with Doug Burris, and he had some encouraging things to say about our prison system. I appreciate you coming on and giving us another perspective, because the most important thing for me is to try to understand this.

Tom Albus (01:20):
Thank you very much for having me. Just so everyone understands, I know Doug Burris very well and think very highly of him. He ran the probation office here in federal court for many years. When I was an assistant US attorney, I was a line prosecutor for many years before I got this job, and immediately before that, I was a circuit judge in St. Louis County, so I was a judge in the state system compared to the federal system. Doug came and helped run the county justice center, and he’s a very innovative, thoughtful person. So I don’t mean to argue with him, but I listened to your podcast with Doug, and one of the things he was talking about was getting people off probation faster, which is fine. You might remember the example he used, the first-degree robber versus the grandmother who cashed her deceased husband’s Social Security check. Those shouldn’t be treated the same, and of course they’re not treated the same now. Alternative probation is a great option for somebody like that grandmother rather than sending her to prison. But bear in mind, if you explain to Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public that this lady cashed $75,000 worth of Social Security checks, do you want to do anything to her? We probably don’t want to incarcerate that person, but the alternative would be probation with a requirement to pay the money back to the extent she can. So no one’s suggesting treating that person the same as a violent criminal, but people do need to have accountability.

Susan Pendergrass (03:13):
About this idea of applying a risk assessment when somebody’s arrested or convicted, so that we’re sure to lock up dangerous criminals and aren’t simply using building more prisons as our policy solution, what do you think is the more efficient use of government resources when it comes to making people feel safer?

Tom Albus (03:42):
You’re absolutely right. We use this risk assessment in St. Louis County. I didn’t learn any of this in law school, but I did feel like it was common sense: does this person have a prior conviction, that person is riskier to let out on bond before trial; is this person under a certain age, that person is riskier. Social scientists create these risk factors, and frankly, I think intuitively anybody, whether they have legal training or not, would apply something similar. They’re fine as far as they go, but when we were in St. Louis County, no matter how many priors the offender had, no matter how young they were, no matter how frequently they had priors, the recommendation was always, well, you’re going to let this person out on bond, and it was just a matter of how many accoutrements to the bond, how frequently they had to check in, and so on. There was no part of the risk assessment where it said this person should be detained before trial, which to me didn’t seem sensible. Some people need to be detained before trial. Another thing these risk assessments didn’t take into account was the strength of the evidence against the person. What if the person was found by police with the smoking gun over the body of the victim? Shouldn’t you take that into account? These risk factors don’t. A lot of times the risk assessment tools are being pushed by NGOs and foundations that, if you look at their website, say their goal is to get everybody out of prison. Again, this is social science, not chemistry. Everybody has a point of view that should be considered, but we have to consider the point of view of the groups pushing to reform how probation credit is counted or to add these risk assessments, because everybody in the criminal justice system has their own point of view.

Susan Pendergrass (05:58):
So what is the reality with the prison population in Missouri? Is it growing or declining?

Tom Albus (06:04):
I believe, and I’ll have to check these numbers, that the Missouri Department of Corrections population is roughly one-third less than it was ten years ago. I believe the United States Bureau of Prisons, the people in prison for federal crimes, is one-quarter less than it was ten years ago, between COVID, a different approach, and the First Step Act. Now, I know you’re very interested in educational policy. What if we had a one-third increase in fourth-grade reading scores in Missouri? Everybody would be pretty happy with that. So here we have these great statistics, but to the extent everything else is equal, if crime is the same and the prison population is down, everybody wants that. But is crime down, and is it down to a level we’re satisfied with?

Susan Pendergrass (07:04):
And is it? People are talking all over the place, including leadership in St. Louis, about how much crime is down. But when we’ve talked to people on the street or had public events, people don’t feel like crime is down. People still see panhandling and graffiti and public disorder. People still don’t want to park their car and walk to a baseball game downtown. Everyone knows you leave your car unlocked because you’re going to get smashed and grabbed anyway. There isn’t a perception that St. Louis feels safer.

Tom Albus (07:38):
Right, and it’s a complex situation regionally. The city of St. Louis, to its credit, has reduced homicides from the mid-200s in 2020 to about 140 in 2025. That’s 50 homicides per 100,000 people. The national average is in the high single digits, so it’s still very elevated in the city of St. Louis. Now you go across Skinker to St. Louis County, where I was a judge, and we’re sitting at roughly the national average in the high single digits. A trend you don’t hear much about is that’s a much elevated rate over the last 10 to 15 years in St. Louis County, maybe 2x or 3x higher than it was 10 to 15 years ago. Then you go across the Missouri River to St. Charles County, and they’re looking at about one murder per 100,000 people. So it’s a big difference as you proceed west on Highway 70, and one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.

Susan Pendergrass (08:50):
What’s been going on in St. Louis County that it’s gone up?

Tom Albus (08:56):
I don’t really know the source of it, but we are dealing with a lot more violent crime in St. Louis County than we did, say, twenty years ago. For example, even though we’ve got approximately four times more people living in St. Louis County than in St. Louis City, we only have about one-third as many homicides every year as the city. Yet we’ve got 200-plus people awaiting trial for homicide in St. Louis County. That’s really the focus of the prosecutor’s office, and rightly so, but they didn’t have the capacity twenty years ago to handle the rate of homicides they’re seeing now, and this backlog is a consequence of that, in my view.

Susan Pendergrass (09:48):
Plus clearance rates haven’t really improved. A lot of the crimes identified as murders aren’t getting solved.

Tom Albus (09:56):
If you look at it, the City of St. Louis Police Department would say their clearance rate has gone up quite a bit, and those are statistics the city updates every day on the police department’s website. At some points they’ve recorded a clearance rate of over 100 percent in the last year because they’re solving historical cases in addition to new cases as they come in. So they’ve gotten their clearance rate very high, and that’s important too, not only for how long you’re going to sentence someone, but because people need to understand that if you commit an offense you’re going to be called to account. Chief Tracy in the city is proud of his clearance rate going up, and he’s right to be.

Susan Pendergrass (10:39):
What are your thoughts on mandatory minimums when judges have discretion?

Tom Albus (10:46):
Mandatory minimums exist in state and federal crime. You could say someone is in prison for second-degree murder and subject to a mandatory minimum of ten years, that’s true, but I don’t think that’s what people are really thinking about when they raise this issue. There are very few people incarcerated in the Missouri Department of Corrections who are there only because of a mandatory minimum that the judge would have preferred to sentence below but wasn’t able to. There was a lot of that when I first became an assistant US attorney 25 years ago with the crack cases, where you could get a five-year mandatory minimum for a very small amount of crack. That was passed by Congress in the Crime Act of 1994, and those ratios have since been changed by Congress. People will talk about nonviolent offenders, but a drug dealer, to me, is not a nonviolent offender. We’re not talking about crack as much anymore. We’re talking about fentanyl, and everybody knows what happens when you come into contact with fentanyl, roughly two hundred Americans a day die from fentanyl overdoses. I would consider that a violent crime, not to mention that firearms and violence often go along with drug dealing. The whole point of my visit with you is just to say these are not easy questions to answer. But if somebody came into your neighborhood and was dealing fentanyl to anybody who wanted it and had money to pay, I would be concerned. Maybe strictly speaking that’s not a violent crime, but it’s a very dangerous, antisocial crime.

Susan Pendergrass (12:42):
So you see these nonprofits and NGOs saying, let’s clear the prisons, let’s put more people on ankle monitors, let’s stop building these massive prisons, Arkansas is building a billion-dollar prison, and there are a lot of foundations saying we could be smarter about this. It sounds like you don’t completely align with that thinking.

Tom Albus (13:13):
Everybody should know where everyone is coming from. You probably recall about ten years ago, when Governor Parson first became governor, Missouri was in the same boat. They said they didn’t have a lot of money, certainly not enough to build new prisons, and Governor Parson said we’re just not going to go down that road. As I said, we were able to reduce our DOC population in Missouri substantially, by a third, and the need for those new prisons went away. Statistically speaking, we’re doing better in 2026 than we did in 2020, notwithstanding the fact that we have a third fewer people in prison. That’s a good thing. But if a foundation comes in and says, well, we have this risk assessment tool, and it’s just science, nothing to it other than science, I’d suggest everyone go to that foundation’s website and see what their mission statement says. This is social science, not physics or chemistry or biology. Everybody has their political point of view, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but we need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that it’s a no-brainer, that you just use this risk assessment, let everybody off probation, and everything gets better and cheaper, a win-win-win. I just don’t subscribe to that.

Susan Pendergrass (14:45):
I saw a case, not in Missouri, of a guy accused in a terrible case involving a child, whose risk assessment was very low, but the nature of the crime was terrible. He was let out and reoffended. I remember thinking the risk assessment didn’t do its job because it didn’t pick up on this particular person’s potential for criminality. In a world with finite resources, what do we do to make St. Louisans feel safer?

Tom Albus (15:31):
That’s what’s so thorny about it. When I was sitting as a judge, sometimes I’d think, what would my wife think, or my mother, or a friend, about this particular person, risk assessment tool aside. For example, if someone’s on bond for a felony and then arrested for a new felony, that gets them a point on their risk assessment. But I think a lot of Missourians would say, I don’t care if you get one point or ten points or thirty points, if we’ve already let you out on bond and you committed a new offense, that’s it, you’re not getting another chance. And then we get into, well, was it a violent crime? If he stole a car on Monday and then steals another car the following Monday, some people would say we just can’t accept that, it’s absurd. I think people are at least entitled to that opinion, even though it’s contrary to what is supposedly following the science.

Susan Pendergrass (16:32):
So do we put more discretion in the hands of judges?

Tom Albus (16:35):
Again, I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the judge can’t override the assessment. I overrode it all the time, and my colleagues did too, because that’s the role of the judge. One thing that came up, you may have followed, there was a juvenile assessment tool that was frequently followed, and the juvenile officer or judge was very reluctant to go against the risk assessment for the juvenile. That got the police up in arms, and there may have been some legislation around it. But the judge should always be able to go against the risk assessment. And as I mentioned earlier, what about a written confession? There’s no question the person did it. You’re presumed innocent at trial, but we can weigh the facts against the person in terms of setting the bond.

Susan Pendergrass (17:34):
Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the perception of public safety in St. Louis, when I lived right between Skinker and DeBaliviere, near Delmar, was just a lack of the rule of law around me. People ran stop signs and stoplights, and there were smash-and-grabs, and someone could commit a crime and get on the MetroLink and get away. We all kind of agree that the MetroLink stations feel really dangerous. We’ve all just accepted that we have to keep floodlights on the outside of our house. Living in the city of St. Louis, which I love, you just develop this tolerance for the fact that crime is going to happen around you and there’s nothing you can do about it. I didn’t feel like the police were really enforcing the small things, and people were getting away with big things too. I wonder what the fix is for that.

Tom Albus (18:40):
Right, and another thing being debated is that you need police officers, and we have perhaps fifty percent fewer police officers policing the city of St. Louis than we did ten years ago. That’s not a good thing. I am in favor of having police officers in the neighborhood. When I was an AUSA, I would go to neighborhood meetings and try to understand what was going on. I never heard anybody say we want fewer police in our neighborhood. I always heard people in every neighborhood saying we want more police, this corner’s a problem, please take care of it. It’s a challenge for the city of St. Louis, and I wish them nothing but the best in getting as many more police officers as they can.

Susan Pendergrass (19:28):
Yeah, and 911 is a bit of a problem too. People complain about not being able to get through. We have 28 different systems, and the city-county line makes it all very confusing. Talks of merging the two always seem to result in nothing, but as you just mentioned, the difference in the murder rate between one side of the line and the other, something needs to be done to fix that.

Tom Albus (20:01):
I always go by the murder rate, because those all get called in. There’s also a difference in how frequently a car break-in might get called in across different areas of our region, so you can’t necessarily rely on all statistics. But homicides get called in, and homicides are a good indicator of the overall safety of a community.

Susan Pendergrass (20:24):
So generally, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you do? Is there anything you would change within the probation, pretrial, and prison system?

Tom Albus (20:38):
No one likes to think about building more prisons because it’s very expensive and it’s kind of the last tool in the toolbox. But in the city of St. Louis, they took out of service and knocked down the medium-security institution known as the Workhouse. That’s not available anymore. So the only place state court judges in the city have to put offenders being detained pretrial is the Justice Center downtown, and that’s at capacity. I would want a lot more police officers, and I probably would want some more places to put the real repeat offenders, the antisocial people, certainly the violent people, so they are incapacitated and out of our community. People who commit Class A or Class B felonies, or new felonies while on probation, parole, or pretrial detention, they still get bond because we’re out of places to put these people. And as we all know, we’re talking about a very small percentage of our community committing these serious crimes. Then we could go back to people having more social capital in the community, people looking out for them, and not letting teenagers or young people be directionless. I see a lot of that when I sit in a courtroom in the city or county, people who just don’t have a plan for their lives and don’t have people in the courtroom supporting them. That’s what I would really change.

Susan Pendergrass (22:17):
Yeah. I mostly study education policy, and St. Louis Public Schools has a chronic absenteeism rate of about 55 percent. I don’t think they even know where those kids are. Until we fix some of those things and somebody’s keeping track of these teenagers, I don’t see their propensity for committing crime going down. I believe first you fix the education system, before they get to the criminal justice system, but unfortunately we don’t have that right now in St. Louis. Well, I appreciate you coming on and giving a different perspective. I’ve heard more than one person, not just Doug Burris, say that risk assessment is going to be the way to fix the problem, and it’s good to hear a different perspective that it comes with a lot of caveats, at minimum.

Tom Albus (23:09):
Right. There are a lot of good people working on this problem, but it’s just not a problem that has a silver bullet, that I’ve seen in 25 years.

Susan Pendergrass (23:18):
Good to know. Well, thank you so much, Tom. I really appreciate it.

Tom Albus (23:21):
Thank you very much, Susan. Thanks for having me.

Produced By Show-Me Opportunity

The post A U.S. Attorney’s Perspective on Criminal Justice Reform with Thomas C. Albus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

St. Louis has a reputation for being a violent city. Crime issues have helped push people out in droves and deterred newcomers from settling in the area. St. Louis City’s population has decreased by over 30% since the 1980s, and the number of vacant downtown buildings has increased substantially. The Wall Street Journal went as far as to call downtown a “real estate nightmare.”

Although St. Louis continues to rank among the most dangerous cities in the country, efforts have been made to solve the ongoing crime problem, beginning with the replacement of former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner in 2023. Gardner exacerbated the crime issue in several ways, including having an exclusion list of police officers who were not allowed to bring cases to her office and creating a massive backlog of more than 6,700 cases that awaited charging decisions. The current St. Louis Circuit Attorney, Gabe Gore, has since cleared all cases in the backlog.

More recent efforts include House Bill (HB) 495, signed by Governor Mike Kehoe into law in March. This legislation transfers control of the St. Louis Police Department to a state-appointed board. The governor has already made five interim appointments to the six-person board (the mayor is the sixth member of the board). In addition, a $45 million 911 dispatch center broke ground last year in St. Louis with the goal of improving response times. In St. Louis, only half of the 911 calls in 2022 were answered within the national standard of 10 seconds.

It is unclear whether these efforts will have positive impacts on public safety in St. Louis, but what is clear is that violent crime in the city is down. It was down 7.8% in 2024 compared to 2023. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) reported homicides were down 6.3 % in 2024. It is worth noting that crime is down across the country, so this may be part of a larger trend.

The fact that St. Louis has lower violent crime and homicide rates is a positive sign, but time will tell if the city can sustain this success and lose the moniker of being one of the nation’s most dangerous cities.

The post St. Louis’s Improving Crime Data appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The screening came just as Kansas City announced another city-sponsored initiative to deal with crime, Kansas City United for Public Safety (KCUPS). It is not yet clear how this group will differ from the previous similar collectives such as KC Nova, the Violence Free Kansas City Committee, KC Common Ground, and Jackson County’s COMBAT. Somehow this group expects to succeed where others have failed. KCUPS had meetings, published a plan, and held a press conference, so it is as real as any anti-crime effort in Kansas City.

The leader of KC Common Ground, Klassie Alcine, was at the screening and gave an interview to Jonathan Ketz of FOX4 KC. Her answer when asked how much money would be needed to address crime in Kansas City? “Billions.”

I have been writing about crime, policing, and criminal justice reform at Show-Me Institute for years. I do not present myself as an expert and I am quick to admit these issues are complex. Kansas City has gotten where it is because of years of bad decision-making. The road ahead will be difficult, slow, and expensive.

But anyone who is remotely aware of Kansas City’s history knows that we spent billions on public education and have little to show for it. We spend millions each year on anti-crime programs through the county COMBAT program without even trying to measure their impact. Kansas City shoppers are also taxed to fund an economic development fund for the city’s poverty-scarred east side. That includes a publicly subsidized grocery store recently suffering high crime.

The people of Kansas City are generous, perhaps to a fault. One more effort to address crime that looks and sounds like other failed efforts needs to do better than leading with a price tag. Tell us what you want to do and give us reasonable goals and the ways you are going to measure success. Anything less seems like asking taxpayers to throw good money after bad.

The post Shocker! Local Leader Demands More Money to Address Issue appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That said, there is a great deal of balancing that has to take place when considering legislation like this. After all, employers and landlords both have their own interests in having a full picture of who they’re hiring or housing. Does a bank want to hire someone convicted of fraud? Probably not. Good faith arguments about the manner and extent of expungement laws are an important part of the process, and those debates are happening in Missouri over Clean Slate. For me, a Missouri version of Clean Slate needs to ensure two things happen.

First, in contrast to Clean Slate’s “automatic expungement” proposal, why not have former offenders initiate the expungement process, after which expungement is automatic?

It’s a nuanced but important point. Supporters of model Clean Slate legislative language generally prefer the idea of “automatic expungement”—that after a certain period of time, an offense drops off criminal records without any action taken by the ex-offender. In Missouri, the existing expungement process is a petition-based system, which can be fraught, winding, and ultimately unwieldy for many former offenders to navigate. Many don’t bother, leaving expungeable offenses on their records.

But combining the offender-initiated expungement process with automated expungement offers the best of both worlds. It puts the responsibility on an offender to start the process of beginning a new chapter in their lives and strikes out the judicial bureaucracy that stops many ex-offenders from initiating expungement to begin with.

Second, the state should not impose a sort of prior restraint on background check companies.

The standard Clean Slate proposal contemplates restrictions on what background check companies can tell employers and landlords, even if what they tell them is true. There’s no denying the truth that ex-offenders broke the law, and background check companies have the right to share truthful information about an individual’s criminal record. The question is, how do you best balance the First Amendment rights of companies and the policy objectives of Clean Slate?

Well, a better way forward is to set out legal incentives for background check companies in the way they characterize past expunged offenses. The state should allow background check companies (1) to omit expunged offenses and protect them from liability for that omission, and (2) to report the expunged offense but only if its expungement is clearly included. Such an approach would not only allow background check companies a path to omit offenses without running afoul of the First Amendment, but it would also give ex-offenders a right to sue for defamation if their criminal history is mischaracterized by these companies.

Central to the issue of background checks is how those performing background checks even gain access to this criminal justice information, which at its core is a kind of transparency issue. Missouri has a robust court activity database where reams of case information are readily available to the public, and overall, that’s a good thing.

But while transparency of government is extraordinarily important, transparency of the records of individuals is a thornier policy subject. Individual income tax filings are highly protected documents not subject to public perusal; should non-violent and comparatively low-level criminal offenses be treated similarly? Perhaps. In any case, if the expungement of criminal records is ever to be properly effectuated, legislators must also assess how available these records should be in general.

As with all policy proposals, legislators should weigh out all the costs and benefits of Clean Slate, both as originally proposed and as it might be modified for Missouri. For a complex issue like criminal justice reform, the details matter, and getting those details right can take time. Clean Slate may or may not get done this year, but with a few tweaks, I think it can get done here in Missouri sooner, not later.

The post A (Tweaked) Clean Slate Bill Offers an Important Opportunity for Criminal Justice Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But December 1st is also an important day for the legislature. That’s because it’s the first day legislation can be submitted for consideration before the chambers reconvene in January. Known as “pre-filing,” the process generally signals what the top priorities are going to be for legislators in the next legislative cycle—with the fastest filers getting the lowest-numbered bills and the sometimes dubious bragging rights of being the first to bring policy ideas to the legislative table.

What will be in the queue? In no particular order, here are some of the ideas that have been getting a lot of talk this fall and will probably be hot topics when the legislature reopens in 2023:

• Open enrollment is the idea that students in the state should, in some form or fashion, be able to enroll in a public school outside their home district. It appears that this will be a major priority in the House. My colleague Susan Pendergrass has talked about the issue at length, and it seems like she will probably do so again in the upcoming session.
• The Missouri Parents’ Bill of Rights, or MPBR, looks likely to make a comeback. The bill would guarantee parents a stronger role in their kids’ education and require curricular transparency from schools and districts that currently doesn’t exist.
• School board reform has been a popular topic of legislative debate during the break, including potential changes to when elections are held and transparency around who board members are and how they can be contacted by the public.
• Lastly in education, there may be a push to clarify who can participate in girls’ sports.
• The corporate income tax made a cameo in this fall’s special session, with a cut to the tax being stripped at the last minute from the individual income tax legislation that eventually passed. With a regular legislative session afoot, a push to cut or even phase out the corporate income tax appears likely. As with the individual income tax, I am a strong supporter of the reduction and elimination of the corporate income tax and am looking forward to hearing that debate in 2023.
• Property tax reform and changes to the Hancock Amendment will likely receive an outsized amount of debate, especially in the House. Both deal with the size of government and the tax burden government can impose.
• There also appears to be interest in the Clean Slate Initiative both inside the legislature and outside it. National organizations appear primed to get involved with a push to expunge certain criminal records, with conditions, to better integrate former inmates back into society. The exact language of the proposal remains in flux, but when it’s finalized, I’ll definitely weigh in on it.

‘Tis the season for policy. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

The post Some Thoughts on “Pre-Filing Eve” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Back in 2019, Institute researchers highlighted Fresh Start Act legislation that other states had passed before Missouri passed its own version the following year. The Fresh Start Act modifies occupational licensing regulations for workers with a criminal record to make it easier for the formerly incarcerated to find gainful employment.

What does that matter? Well, strict occupational licensing rules for those who have criminal records can make it harder for those with a checkered past to find work. Not only can that impede successful re-entry efforts, but it limits the supply of workers. The Fresh Start Act does not allow criminal records to disqualify an individual from receiving an occupational license unless the criminal conviction directly relates to the occupation (an individual with a conviction relating to children would not be able to obtain a teaching license, for example). But for the vast majority of former inmates, relaxing licensing rules is a good thing.

Licensing burdens are, of course, a problem for many seeking work, but those with criminal records are particularly at risk for being written out of entire sectors of the economy. State legislatures have started addressing this problem; since 2015, 38 states, including Missouri, have reformed their occupational licensing laws to make it easier for ex-offenders to find work in industries in which the state requires an occupational license to operate.

The Fresh Start Act may seem like a small thing, but for the formerly incarcerated, it could mean the world. More should be done on licensing in general—including the regular sunsetting of all licensing regimes —but this legislation was a good step.

The post A Criminal Justice Reform in Occupational Licensing appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Some 38 million people, nearly one in eight, live in poverty in today’s America as liberals and conservatives spar predictably over solutions – government assistance versus pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Researcher and writer Michael Tanner wants to draw from both sides.

Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and a National Review online columnist, explores the issue in a discussion of his book The Inclusive Economy. His remedy is not more government intervention in spending or redistribution but rather a series of actions that address the racism, gender discrimination, and economic dislocation feeding poverty. They range from criminal justice reform to greater educational flexibility and the elimination of savings barriers for the poor.

We’re hosting this event in both St. Louis and Kansas City.

To RSVP for St. Louis, click here

To RSVP for Kansas City, click here

The post Free Lecture: Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner on How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While persons are legally responsible for the costs of their board bills under section 221.070, if such responsibilities fall delinquent, the debts cannot be taxed as court costs and the failure to pay that debt cannot result in another incarceration.

We previously wrote about the plight of “pay to stay” debtors prisons. In short, courts were locking people up for not adequately paying the fees associated with their previous incarceration, triggering an awful cycle. The Show-Me Institute joined in filing a friend of the court brief on behalf of George Richey. We are grateful to Mr. Richey, among others, who chose to challenge this practice. We look forward to more victories in our search for sensible criminal justice reforms.

The post Missouri to End Debtors Prisons appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That pushback didn’t materialize, though, because not only would jobs not be lost, but the workers at Crossroads would be employed at a nearby facility. Specifically, when I heard it mentioned during debate on the Senate floor that Crossroads was across the street from the facility it would be consolidated with—the Western Missouri Correctional Center (WMCC)—at first I thought that was an exaggeration. “Across the street?” Really?

But lo and behold, Missouri has had two prisons operating across the street from each other for about 20 years now:

Why it took so long to consolidate the prisons, I’m not sure. Because Crossroads is a maximum-security prison, security will have to be fortified in at least part of WMCC, to the tune of about $3 million. Perhaps that was the reason. But that $3 million is a small price to pay for even larger savings, and from a good governance perspective, it sure looks like bringing these facilities together is the right call. Missourinet elaborated on the reasoning for consolidation:

The department has been battling to fill hundreds of correctional officer job vacancies. [State Department of Corrections Director Anne] Precythe says the reorganization plan will create a fully-functioning, safe environment, versus trying to “limp along” with two half-staffed, half-full institutions.

The estimated $20 million savings from closing CRCC is slated to give department employees, minus executive staff, a one percent pay raise for two years of continued service. If Parson’s proposed three percent state worker pay increase happens, then corrections workers would get another raise. Precythe has touted the pay boost as the largest in the department’s history.

This consolidation may have been in the works for a while, but whatever its genesis, it’s an elegant solution to saving taxpayer money and reorienting, if ever so slightly, the state’s criminal justice strategy. If the state can build fewer prisons and push potential inmates back into being contributing members of society, Missourians on the whole will be that much better off.

The post Prison Consolidation a Smart Step Toward Better Government appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Whether it is for a technical violation of the terms of their parole or because they committed a new offense, having so many people return to prison is expensive. The average cost to incarcerate just one person for one year is $21,000. Multiply that by thousands of people serving years-long sentences and the cost of recidivism for Missouri taxpayers is in the millions.

While there are several important factors that may contribute to recidivism rates, research has found that finding employment upon release strongly affects whether someone will end up back in prison. This study from the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments explains why employment for ex-offenders is important:

Employment can make a strong contribution to recidivism-reduction efforts because it refocuses individuals’ time and efforts on prosocial activities, making them less likely to engage in riskier behaviors and to associate with people who do…Employment also has important societal benefits, including reduced strain on social service resources, contributions to the tax base, and safer, more stable communities.

Last year, Show-Me Institute’s Patrick Tuohey testified on a bill that would have removed the restriction on anyone convicted of a felony from obtaining a license to sell lottery tickets—a law which essentially prohibited them from working at convenience stores or gas stations. While this bill wasn’t adopted, other states have taken an approach that Missouri should consider.

Instead of considering different licensed occupations piecemeal, Fresh Start Legislation adopted in other states requires a comprehensive review of licensing boards’ restrictions on ex-offenders. Such a review can help ex-offenders by removing unnecessary barriers to employment. Part two of this blog post will dig more into what a Fresh Start law would look like and how it could help Missouri reduce its recidivism rates.

The post Giving Ex-Offenders a Fresh Start When Looking For a Job: Part One appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In effect, the counties are operating debtor’s prisons.

George Richey is one person who has had a run in with these board bills. According to the Missourian,

Of the $3,226 assessed to Richey in 2015, $3,150 is for board at $35 a day.

Almost 2 1/2 years later, Richey is still paying for that bill, with a balance of around $1,600 left as of May. That is, until he was hit with a new board bill in 2016 of an additional $2,275—the result of being jailed because he couldn’t fully pay the first bill.

Missouri is not alone in this practice. According to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, “as of 2015, at least 43 states authorize room and board fees and at least 35 states authorize medical fees to be charged to inmates in either state or county correctional facilities.”

Through his public defender, Richey filed suit against the state of Missouri seeking to end the practice, and Missouri’s Attorney General lent support to Richey’s effort, noting in an amicus brief filed with the Missouri Supreme Court, “De facto debtors’ prisons have no place in Missouri, and I am proud to stand up against a system that seeks to treat its poorer citizens as ATMs.”

Last week, the Show-Me Institute joined the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, the Fines & Fees Justice Center, the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, and Fair and Just Prosecution in submitting an amicus curiae brief to the Missouri Supreme Court. The brief notes that the current system burdens both the individuals being fined as well as the courts, and that there are other, more effective ways to collect debt. The filing concludes:

Jail debt, when imposed on indigent individuals like Mr. Richey, is irrational, unjust, counterproductive, and likely unconstitutional.  This Court should reverse the trial court’s denial of Mr. Richey’s motion to retax costs.

There are plenty of opportunities for criminal justice reform in Missouri, and we have written about many of them in the past. Often such reforms focus on how to maintain public safety while reducing costs to taxpayers. This effort, however, focuses on protecting the liberty of individuals from pernicious government. We hope the courts will agree.

The post Show-Me Institute Issues Brief Regarding “Pay to Stay” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I testified regarding how HB 1739 and its companion bill Senate Bill could benefit Missouri. The reform effort promises the possibility not only of saving taxpayer money, but of better protecting the individual liberty of Missourians in the criminal justice system. I hope the the Senate acts swiftly to make these reforms a reality.

The post The Time Is Right for Mandatory Minimum Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri leads the Midwest in incarceration rates, and we’re eighth highest in the nation. We just recently lost to Kentucky our position of having the highest incarceration rate for women. If we do nothing to slow the flood of new inmates, Missouri will need to spend about $485 million in the next five years to build and operate two new prisons. For comparison’s sake, the entire budget of the state Department of Corrections is $725 million in 2018. (It was $580 million in 2006.)

According to the Missouri Department of Corrections’ 2016 Profile of Institutional and Supervised Offender Population, 41 percent of inmates are incarcerated for nonviolent and/or drug-related crimes. These two offender groups, incidentally, are the fastest-growing populations since 2011. Missourians could save hundreds of millions of dollars if courts had the flexibility to sentence these offenders to treatment programs or probationary periods prior to locking them up—while still retaining the ability to protect us from violent or habitual offenders.

Furthermore, research indicates that large sentences are not as effective a deterrent as swift capture and conviction. And large sentences are expensive, and not just in terms of the public dollars used to house and feed inmates. They also impose a significant cost on families and make it harder for ex-offenders to re-enter the workforce and become productive members of society.

The good news is that there is a better way.

Other states, such as Texas, have found ways to increase public safety and reduce recidivism while reducing public spending on prisons. Reducing mandatory minimum sentencing in certain circumstances is a part of that public policy strategy. Let’s return to judges the discretion they need to separate violent offenders from those who pose less of a threat. To do nothing will put greater pressure on public coffers while offering no respite from crime.

The post Reform Missouri’s Mandatory Minimums appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One major component of these reforms would be to increase the number of community treatment centers for substance abuse and mental health. Currently, 35 percent of admissions are for in-prison treatment because no alternative exists in the offenders’ community. Unfortunately, the task force found that Missouri’s in-prison treatment programs are ineffective, thus wasting taxpayers’ dollars. Establishing more community-based treatment programs could produce much better outcomes and be a better use of the state’s resources.

The proposed legislation would also assist law enforcement in combatting violent crime, increase access to victim compensation, and adopt better practices throughout the Department of Corrections to reduce recidivism. Given that Missouri’s prisons are already over capacity, pursuing these reforms would be a step in the right direction.

The post An Opportunity for Responsible Criminal Justice Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The case is fairly straightforward, and our testimony is brief. Because Missouri’s incarceration rate is so high—8th in the nation—we are on course to need two more state prisons at a cost to build and operate of $485 million over the next 5 years. Giving judges the flexibility to avoid mandatory sentences where there are extenuating circumstances will not only save taxpayers money, but also reduce the burden on individuals trying to piece together their lives.

The post Reducing Mandatory Minimums appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Senate Bill 748 and Mandatory Minimum Sentencing appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post House Bill 1739 and Mandatory Minimum Sentencing appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Giving judges this discretion should reduce concerns that offenders will be let off the hook too easily. Repeat offenders, or those whose crimes are especially serious, could still be dealt with appropriately. Meanwhile, the juvenile justice system could handle the others, which could benefit both the teens and the state.

One concern about this policy is the cost. Based on the fiscal note for similar legislation introduced during the last legislative session, placing more teens in the juvenile system would cost an additional $6.715 million per year. Dr. David Mitchell, an economics professor from Missouri State University, used an alternative cost calculation in a paper he presented at a recent Raise the Age panel discussion.

He argues that even though the per-person/per-year cost is higher in the juvenile system than in the adult prisons, 17-year-olds sent to adult prison spend more time behind bars, on average, than they would if they were in juvenile detention centers. Thus, the cost savings would be higher for the Department of Corrections than originally estimated and the net burden on the state would be closer to $2.432 million per year. He also points out that this amount is only .008% of the state’s budget.

So the cost of this policy to the state would be less than previously assumed. The benefits, however, could be large according to Dr. Mitchell’s estimates. Based on several factors, there could be long-term economic gains from placing most 17-year-olds in the juvenile system.

First, teens convicted of crimes have better earning potential if they go through the juvenile system. Studies have found that teens who have been in adult prison have a 20 percent lower chance of being employed after they are released and work 25 to 30 percent fewer hours if they do manage to find a job. On the other hand, teens who were convicted of a crime but did not go to an adult prison had almost as good a chance at finding a job as teens who did not commit a crime at all.

Second, there is a large disparity in recidivism rates between the juvenile system and the adult system. In Missouri, the recidivism rate for youthful offenders coming out of the adult prison system is about 67 percent, whereas the rate for those coming out of the juvenile system is 15 percent.

With these two factors in mind, placing most 17-year-olds into the juvenile system could be fiscally beneficial to the state. They would be more likely to have a job and be paying taxes (money gained for the state) after serving their sentences, and less likely to end up back in jail (less money being spent by the state).

It’s impossible to know exactly how much raising the age could save the state, but Dr. Mitchell’s analysis indicates that it would be a worthwhile investment. With such a small upfront cost and  potentially large long term gains for the state—not to mention positive impact on these teens’ lives—shouldn’t Missouri join the vast majority of states with this sensible reform?

The post What Is the Cost of ‘Raising the Age’? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Learn more About Raising The Age:

Criminal Justice Reform: Raising The Age 

Raise The Age – And Save! 

The post Show-Me Now! Justice and the Future: Is It Time to Raise the Age? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Health insurance premium hikes
• Free speech on college campuses
• Nationwide school choice survey results
• Transparency for special taxing districts
• School choice in Illinois
• Criminal justice reform opportunities

Click on the link below to read more.

The post Show-Me Institute’s October 2017 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.