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.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Doug Burris, retired Justice Services Director and Chief United States Probation Officer, about criminal justice reform in Missouri and St. Louis. They discuss Missouri’s risk-based approach to sentencing and supervision; why building more prisons may not reduce crime; low violent-crime clearance rates in St. Louis; the case for bail reform and expanded electronic monitoring; the Safer Supervision Act before Congress; and more.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00):
Welcome to the podcast, Doug Burris, who has been in and around criminal justice reform. I know you’ve been making a lot of pushes nationally, and you’ve worked within Missouri. What I want to talk about today is that in St. Louis city and county, folks are really celebrating this reduction in crime. Murders are down, and therefore we are on the verge of solving this issue. But it doesn’t feel that way to people who live there. I know you ran the county jail for a while and you’ve been closely involved in what’s going on there. What is your perspective on the St. Louis region in terms of where things stand today, in the middle of 2026, when it comes to criminal justice reform and identifying and clearing crimes?

Doug Burris (00:57):
Well, first of all, Susan, thank you for having me as a guest on your show. It’s greatly appreciated. I’m such a fan of the Show-Me Institute. To answer your question, there has been some progress, but I think what we have done is taken baby steps and we still need to walk and then run. There’s much work that needs to be done. I think the state of Missouri as a whole has been a great example of what can happen when criminal justice reform is done correctly. What was done with the Department of Corrections with prior work, including House Bill 1525, allowed for focusing on more high-risk cases and moving low-risk cases through the system quicker, getting them productive and out once they are. That’s what should be done more at the federal level, following what the state of Missouri did, and also at the local levels in the city of St. Louis. I think that’s exactly where we’re headed.

Susan Pendergrass (02:00):
So what did happen at the state level in Missouri? How did they shift their focus? It sounds kind of strange, but to make this system more effective and efficient, you need to find and lock up violent criminals, but people who are not violent criminals who commit a crime could be dealt with differently. What did Missouri do specifically?

Doug Burris (02:01):
Well, Missouri led the way for the rest of the country, as did Texas, where they implemented various reforms. One was making sentencing decisions and supervision decisions based on a risk level, where they had risk assessments that followed the science of criminal justice on who needs to be the most supervised and frankly the longest incarcerated, as opposed to the exact opposite. I’ll give two extremes of the situation. At the federal level, we have a grandmother who continues to cash her dead husband’s Social Security check, and that person ends up on federal supervision on the same caseload as a violent child predator. It’s really not necessary to have that woman on supervision when the real focus should be on the violent person. There is the Safer Supervision Act that’s before Congress right now, and we’re really hoping that gets passed so there will be more emphasis on supervising the people who are at highest risk, using risk assessments as a tool to determine that.

Susan Pendergrass (03:45):
And how long has Missouri been doing this? Do we know anything about how it has impacted the size of the prison population?

Doug Burris (03:53):
That’s a fantastic question. It’s been in play for about five years now. What has happened is the population of both the prisons in Missouri and the people on supervision has decreased, but the crime rates have not gone up. The same thing has held in Texas, which has done it for just a little bit longer than Missouri. So following the science really does work. And it’s at a considerable expense. It’s about thirty thousand dollars to house someone in a Missouri prison, and in a federal prison it’s over forty-two thousand dollars. It might be cheaper to send these people to college than to send them to jail or prison. And of course there might be more good done too, because there have been all kinds of studies showing that people who get an education or vocational training have drastically lower recidivism rates. That’s what we really need to be focusing on, and not the grandmother I talked about earlier.

Susan Pendergrass (04:58):
Well, it seems to me that a lot of states, including red states, are moving toward the idea of just building more and bigger prisons and locking everybody up, because if you want to show that you really care about crime, you demonstrate that you are ready to lock everybody up. But that’s not effective or efficient, right?

Doug Burris (05:21):
No, that’s exactly right. And unfortunately we’re seeing that in our neighboring state of Arkansas, where they’re constructing a new prison expected to cost one billion dollars to open the doors. One billion dollars. And then to operate it, if their annual rate of housing someone in prison equals Missouri’s, it will cost about a hundred million dollars a year to operate. And again, we’re going to have people in there who could be supervised in the community or given opportunities like drug treatment, job training, and education, things that will have people contributing to the tax base rather than taking from it.

Susan Pendergrass (06:03):
How do you convince people that a risk assessment is going to work when they want all the criminals off the streets?

Doug Burris (06:10):
Well, it’s twofold. One is we have to educate people that putting someone in prison is going to cost tens of thousands of dollars every year, and in the end they may come out more angry and less able to adapt to the community. The other thing is to follow the science. Look at what Missouri has done and what Texas has done, where they have lowered the prison population and crime has actually gone down. This is something other states should be following as well. We can’t keep everyone in prison forever. We just can’t afford it. And not only that, but it’s also inhumane. The cost would be astronomical if we start keeping people in prison for low-risk crimes that in some cases have no victims.

Susan Pendergrass (07:10):
A couple of things came up in the last legislative session. Governor Kehoe passed a violent crime clearance rate grant program, but the legislature hasn’t funded it. What are your thoughts on that?

Doug Burris (07:27):
When it comes to violent crime, I’m all in favor of keeping the most violent people in as long as possible and perhaps even for life. The question is where can we find ways to save money with those who aren’t violent? That’s what we really need to be focusing on. When you’re supervising a violent person but you also have nonviolent people on your caseload, it really just doesn’t make sense.

Susan Pendergrass (08:01):
Well, I was just thinking specifically about trying to direct some funds toward clearing crimes, because even though murders are down, clearance rates on murders are still pretty low in St. Louis, in the thirty to forty percent range. I would think that the same people who are interested in locking everybody up would like to clear more of these crimes. If you look at carjackings, most of those go unsolved. Maybe one in ten is cleared. While we focus on risk assessment, which is a great idea, there are other things we could be doing, like working harder to clear the crimes that are committed.

Doug Burris (08:39):
Absolutely. That makes complete and total sense, because when you’re talking about the worst of the worst, they don’t commit one crime and then never do it again. This is an excellent idea for putting resources toward making the community safer.

Susan Pendergrass (08:56):
Another thing that came up in the last legislative session was DNA testing people who are arrested, running their DNA and then disposing of it if they don’t match anything. I don’t think that went anywhere. I know there are a number of bills that have moved through trying to make Missouri a safer place. It wasn’t a really productive legislative session in 2026 in Jefferson City. A lot of things didn’t happen, but things are being attempted. What about St. Louis specifically? Having run the jail in the county, what do you think needs to be done there to improve residents’ feeling of safety?

Doug Burris (09:38):
I think more resources need to be directed at the court level, first of all, and at the investigative level like you talked about. But there are people in jail awaiting trial who have not been found guilty for three to five years. Can you imagine what it would be like to be in a place where you don’t see the sun for three to five years? You don’t feel the sun on your face or the hug of a loved one. I saw some of those cases where people were headed to trial and after three to five years the case just goes away. I think we need to really focus on giving the courts resources, and that includes both prosecutors and public defenders. Public defenders have some of the highest caseloads in the nation here in Missouri. If someone is innocent or can be dealt with quickly and given a path to become a productive citizen, that’s what we really should be focusing on.

Susan Pendergrass (10:37):
What about the bail system? Does that need reforming?

Doug Burris (10:41):
Yes, I really think so. That’s one of the things some other states have done that has shown incredible results: using a risk assessment at bail. The federal system does that currently, and I think it’s still underutilized. There are things that can be done with that risk assessment in terms of supervision strategies, but I think the judge needs to know the absolute risk of that person and what can be done to address it when making a decision on bail.

Susan Pendergrass (11:14):
Can’t we put more people on monitoring? I hate to suggest everyone gets an ankle monitor, but can’t we monitor more people while they’re awaiting trial rather than having to house and feed them?

Doug Burris (11:31):
Yes, absolutely. That’s an area that needs to be expanded. In the St. Louis County jail, for example, which is the largest jail in Missouri, there are three hundred people in custody right now who are low risk. We’re spending about a hundred and twenty dollars a day to keep them in jail, potentially for years. Low-risk people, if you follow the science, can typically be supervised in the community.

Susan Pendergrass (12:06):
So do you think that if we were to implement all of these reforms, do a risk assessment on every person charged, only lock up the violent criminals, and let people await their trial at home, that St. Louis would feel more safe or less safe?

Doug Burris (12:07):
Well, I think with proper supervision you’d have to do it right. You just can’t let everyone out. Utilizing the risk assessment would really be the key, because someone may be charged with a low-risk crime this time, but they could be on parole for a prior murder or rape or something along those lines. That’s why you really need to look at the risk assessment to determine the appropriate strategies for releasing people.

Susan Pendergrass (12:42):
Yeah. This just seems to be a growing sector of our economy and a growing slice of the budget pie. Missouri has budget problems. We’re putting so much money toward this idea of reducing crime, and for some reason people still just don’t want to walk to their car alone at night. I know there’s a lot of general public disorder in St. Louis, graffiti, homelessness, panhandlers, that also contribute to it. I wish I could understand a reasonable, cost-effective approach to

Doug Burris (13:26):
Yes.

Susan Pendergrass (13:37):
improving those conditions, because I know other cities have and I believe St. Louis can do it, but we have this reputation of being a crime-ridden city, and I think that’s so unfortunate.

Doug Burris (13:47):
Right. I completely agree with you. The truth is the answer isn’t to lock everybody up. The United States has the second highest rate of incarceration on the planet, only behind North Korea. The Department of Justice reports that if incarceration rates remain the same, one out of every fifteen adults in the United States will serve a prison term. One out of every fifteen. And that’s a prison term for a felony conviction, not a jail term for a DUI or a bad check. The costs are astronomical: thirty thousand dollars a year to house someone in a Missouri prison, paid for by the taxpayers. There have been proven strategies for getting people in and out of the criminal justice system. Ninety-three percent of those who remain employed on supervision successfully complete supervision. Those who remain unemployed throughout their supervision have a more than fifty percent failure rate. Getting people a decent job where they can care for others and find meaning is really one of the keys to lowering crime.

Susan Pendergrass (14:45):
Yeah. And there are public-private partnerships, and partnerships through religious organizations and other programs that have been shown to work, if we would free them up.

Doug Burris (15:13):
That is so true. Chuck Colson’s old organization, Prison Fellowship, is one of the best with the programs they offer in prisons and to people when they get out. It has proven, particularly in Iowa, to show drastic reductions in recidivism.

Susan Pendergrass (15:25):
Wow, that’s great. So I’m surprised to hear that Missouri has led the way on prison populations. I thought there was consideration about building a new prison, but I believe it’s not happening. Is that right?

Doug Burris (15:55):
Yes, that’s exactly right. Our prison population has actually decreased in the last few years.

Susan Pendergrass (16:03):
Wow, that’s really surprising to me. But good to hear. So what are you looking for the governor or the state legislature to do in the coming years?

Doug Burris (16:12):
I think they should build on the reforms that have already been proven to be successful. The one thing you mentioned that I think is frankly brilliant is the idea of working to close open violent crime cases, because on the violent cases, the chances are it’s not one crime they committed and then they go to work the next day and never commit another crime. I think that would be something fantastic for the state legislature to do.

Susan Pendergrass (16:37):
And at the federal level, what are you hoping to see done?

Doug Burris (16:46):
The Safer Supervision Act, as I mentioned before, is actually a bipartisan act, but it’s being led by the right right now. The conservatives are the ones who have introduced it into Congress. The Department of Justice is in favor of it. It would make the assessments we talked about more prominent, and it would also give people incentives to do things right, like getting a college education or a good-paying job and paying off restitution, where they can get off supervision earlier. That makes complete sense. But also, almost everyone convicted of a federal crime now is given supervision, like the grandmother I mentioned earlier who cashed her dead husband’s Social Security checks after he passed. This would allow for a more

Susan Pendergrass (17:33):
Mm-hmm.

Doug Burris (17:42):
thorough assessment at the time of sentencing, for the judge to not put people on supervision who don’t need it. That would clear up resources so more time could be spent on the people who really need to be supervised, as opposed to those who don’t.

Susan Pendergrass (18:01):
Yeah. A lot of the sentencing reform we hear about involves mandatory minimums, which force judges into incarcerating people whether they want to or not. I assume that’s not something you would support.

Doug Burris (18:16):
No. I worked in the federal system for twenty-three years and saw the damage that mandatory minimums have done. For instance, with crack cases, I saw a judge sentence someone who was selling five grams of crack. A gram is equal to about a sugar packet you put into your coffee, and five grams carried a mandatory five years. And then you would have people with no mandatory minimums who robbed a bank and did a shooting receive lower sentences than drug cases. Thankfully there were two reductions in the crack mandatory minimums, applied retroactively. Over 23,000 people had a resentencing, and when they were released, they did not offend at higher levels than those who served their full terms. That was money well saved. The judge has a better idea on sentencing someone when they have all the facts of the case before them, rather than relying on a statistical report done ten years prior that says, because he was convicted of this crime, he gets this sentence.

Susan Pendergrass (19:17):
Yeah. Right. Well, I’m relatively new to this area, but I think it’s all pretty fascinating. We struggle enough to get people to live in our cities, and if they don’t feel safe, that’s not going to help. I look forward to learning more about this area of policy and following more closely what Missouri and St. Louis specifically are doing. I would like to have you come back and talk about it again when there are real policies being considered, because it’s not going away and there’s a lot to learn.

Doug Burris (20:11):
Well, I appreciate it. I enjoyed my forty-year career in the criminal justice system, and hopefully I’ll be the only guy you’ve ever met who has been in more prisons than John Gotti.

Susan Pendergrass (20:16):
Hopefully. Thank you so much, Doug. I really appreciate it.

Doug Burris (20:27):
Thank you, Susan. It was a real honor.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Risk, Reform, and Public Safety in Missouri with Doug Burris 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.

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.

If Missouri can reduce growth in the cost of our criminal justice system through responsible reform, shouldn’t we do it? Governor Greitens’s proposed budget for FY2019 includes some of the recommendations from the task force, such as treatment courts and community-based treatment programs, but much was left out. With Missouri taxpayers staring at such a large bill, additional reforms deserve serious consideration.

Reform objectives fall within three broader categories: reducing violent crime, reducing treatment-related admissions, and reducing recidivism. Addressing each of these areas could help slow the growth of our prison population.

Let’s take a closer look at what the task force has proposed:

• Reducing Violent Crime in Our Communities by giving more state support to local police departments, providing more support for victims, updating technology systems, and providing incentives for county jails to reserve limited jail space for dangerous offenders
• Reducing Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment-Related Admissions by improving current treatment programs in prison, improving community-based treatment options, strengthening community supervision centers, and expanding behavioral health services
• Reducing Recidivism and Readmission to Prison by amending supervision practices to reduce revocations, better preparing people leaving prison, providing proper training on risk assessment and correctional practices for staff, and supporting treatment courts

The total cost of these reforms is estimated at $189 million over the next five years—about $300 million less than the cost of building two more prisons.

With our prisons already over capacity, we need to begin thinking about reform immediately. Lawmakers have introduced criminal justice reform bills that include “Raise the Age” (requiring 17-year-olds to be tried as juveniles), mandatory minimum sentencing reform, and changes to state reimbursements to county jails. Nevertheless, additional reforms will likely be needed in order to control, let alone reduce, our prison population in the coming years.

When faced with similar circumstances in Texas—spend $2 billion on new prisons or curb incarceration rates—the legislature decided to invest $241 million in reforms instead. Now Texas is closing facilities that are no longer needed, and crime rates fell 26 percent between 2007 and 2014. With a bit more urgency, perhaps Missouri can also protect taxpayers while at the same time making our communities safer. 

The post Missouri Needs Criminal Justice Reform-and Fast appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to the National Institute of Corrections, “The crime rate in Missouri (2015) is about 18% higher than the national average rate.” Missouri is also eighth in the nation in its incarceration rate, imprisoning 530 people per 100,000 population in 2015.

Then there is the cost. The Department of Corrections budget has grown from $580 million in 2006 to $710 million in 2016. In the last five years that growth has been driven chiefly by adult institutions. The only good news in Missouri’s prison data is that as of 2012, Missouri paid $22,350 each year per inmate, well below the national average of $32,142.

Missouri is not alone in struggling with crime and incarceration rates. High crime rates in the 1970s led many state legislatures to adopt harsh sentencing guidelines, including mandatory minimum sentences for various crimes. The states embarked on “throw the key away” crime control measures that increased the prison population at great public expense. But research has shown that there are diminishing returns to harsh sentences—they don’t always result in a reduction in crime. States have been reexamining their sentencing laws, and the results are promising. Early research from around the country suggests that some criminal justice reforms, such as those that address mandatory minimum sentencing, can reduce crime rates and save states money. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has published an excellent paper on the matter.

According to the Missouri Department of Corrections’ just-released Profile of Institutional and Supervised Offender Population (page 33), of the 30,754 members of the prison population, 41 percent are there for either nonviolent crime (7,377 inmates) or for drug-related crimes (5,403 inmates). These two offender groups, incidentally, are the fastest-growing populations since 2011. Imagine how much Missouri could save if courts had the flexibility to sentence these nonviolent offenders to treatment programs or probationary periods prior to locking them up—while still retaining the ability to treat violent or habitual offenders harshly.

Furthermore, imagine the benefit in human capital if nonviolent and drug offenders were sentenced to treatment or probation instead of being warehoused in state institutions with few opportunities for self-improvement.

The model reforms ALEC recommends are known at the Justice Safety Valve Act, and have been introduced in the Missouri general assembly as HB1037 and HB1046. If these reforms can do what they have done elsewhere—protect Missourians while avoiding unnecessary sentencing and costs—they are well worth consideration.

The post Criminal Justice Reform: Addressing the Costs of Incarceration appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Part of the potential benefit is related to federal guidelines that require jailed and imprisoned youth under age 18 to be kept completely separate from the adult population. The guidelines, designed to prevent sexual and physical abuse of children, are expensive to comply with, and Raising the Age would reduce the number of youth who require this protection.

There are additional reasons to think that Raise the Age reforms would save money. Ninety-three percent of 17-year-olds arrested in Missouri are charged with nonviolent or misdemeanor offenses. In the current system they are charged, jailed, and imprisoned as adults. That is costly to taxpayers, and the Missouri Department of Corrections estimates that it would save $14 million each year if, as legislation now being considered in the Senate and the House proposes, most 17-year olds were prosecuted in juvenile court instead of the adult system.

The good news is that thanks to previous and largely successful reforms in Missouri’s juvenile criminal justice system, there are fewer children going through the system. In 2006, the Division of Youth Services (DYS) saw 1,214 commitments. In 2016, there were only 645—a reduction of nearly 50 percent.

But representatives of the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association (MJJA)—a trade association of “juvenile officers,” a class of court employee that works with youth in the juvenile justice system—testified against HB 274, a measure that would require that 17-year-olds be prosecuted under the juvenile justice system unless they have been certified as adults. The MJJA representatives claim the measure will increase workload, and they want passage to be contingent on more than $15 million in new spending for more juvenile officers. It’s natural to assume that an influx of new clients might justify hiring more officers, but consider two trends in Missouri’s juvenile justice population over the past decade or so:

• Total referrals to juvenile court are down 28% since 2004. (Source: Missouri Juvenile & Family Division 2015 Annual Report, page 10)
• Missouri already pays for over 20% more juvenile officers than it did in 2006, when nearly twice as many youth were arrested and passed through Missouri’s juvenile courts.

Raising the Age could be of great benefit to the children caught up in Missouri’s criminal justice system, and the opportunity to move them to the juvenile court system could also save taxpayers a lot of money. It would be unfortunate if this reform fell victim to state employees who demand more funding despite already having one-fifth more workers to handle just over half the cases they did 10 years ago. Where is the justice in that?

The post Raise the Age-and Save! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Why should we expunge some criminal records? Because an arrest record, even from years ago, can stand between a person and a job. Low-level offenders who have served their time and have demonstrated their successful rehabilitation should not be held back by their past mistakes. They should be given an opportunity to move forward and contribute meaningfully to society. Expungement provides this opportunity.

Missouri currently allows the opportunity for expungement of a limited number of non-violent, low-level felonies and an approved list of misdemeanor offenses (see here for a link to the Missouri Revised Statutes for Expungement) after a period of time. In this current legislative session, Missouri Senate Bill 588, House Bill 1889, and House Bill 2224, would increase the number of times that an offender can petition for expungement and reduce the waiting period between the end of the sentence and eligibility to petition for expungement.

Currently, offenders have to wait 20 years if they committed a qualified (non-violent) felony, or 10 years if they committed a misdemeanor or ordinance violation or were arrested. These reforms would shorten the time for felons to five years and all others to three. Most importantly, these bills would expand the eligibility for expungement of records to include a wider range of misdemeanors, low-level, non-violent felony convictions, and arrests.

As Senator Bob Dixon of Springfield has said: “[this allows] the legislators to have a very frank discussion about a real expungement process that provides a path of restoration to those who have done wrong but have learned from their mistakes and have corrected their ways over a period of time so that they can, among other things, find employment.”

The best way to prevent recidivism is to help rehabilitating offenders get jobs. A 2009 study by the Missouri Department of Corrections (here, p. 26) found that Missouri offenders who were unemployed or employed only part time consistently had higher recidivism rates than those who were employed full time (working 35 hours or more a week).

Reforming criminal expungement strengthens Missouri’s program of restorative and rehabilitative justice and ultimately promotes greater economic opportunity for individuals who have paid their debt to society. That goal is worth pursuing.

The post Giving Non-Violent Offenders a Second Chance appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The department’s Joseph Eddy says it costs $44.68 a day per inmate. He says $12.14 a day is for medical and mental health services. Another $2.54 pays for three meals a day.

Prisoners also are paid for their work—7-dollars-50 cents a month. If they have their GED, they can earn an extra dollar. That’s about 35 cents a day.

Eddy says the direct costs of each inmate every day is $16.39 a day. The other $28 go for the administrative and prison personnel, utilities, and other costs that go with running a prison.

Per my calculations, that amounts to $16,308.20 per year, which is 26 percent smaller than the federal poverty line of $22,050 — and less than I would have expected. A quick search of the per-inmate expenditures in peer states suggests that Missouri ranks toward the bottom in its per-inmate expenditures.

It is interesting that the direct costs of each inmate amount to only 37 percent of the total cost per each inmate. Even more interesting is that medical care represents a full 74 percent of the direct costs of each inmate. To me, all of this suggests that there is actually not a lot of fat that can or will be trimmed, and that those looking to prioritize significant savings would do well to look elsewhere. That being said, there may still be ways for the state corrections department to operate more efficiently. In a subsequent post, I’ll discuss how Missouri can create markets and design incentives in ways that can save it some of the money it currently spends on corrections.

The post Cost of a Missouri Inmate appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Missouri House Budget Committee was told two Missouri prisons could close down if the House cuts funds by five percent.

The warning was delivered to the budget officials by Public Safety & Corrections Chairman Dwight Scharnhorst from St. Louis County.

A top official told Scharnhorst how losing nearly 20 million dollars would effect on the Department of Corrections.

“His statement at the time was, ‘I will definitely have to close one institution, possibly two.’ It would be minimum security, he designated that right away.” said Scharnhorst.

Adult Prison Director Tom Clements says non-violent prisoners and those eligible for parole could be released before the end of their sentences.

So, what’s the problem? The state would save money, and people who mostly should not have been in prison in the first place would be free. I suppose those who work in the closed prison(s) would be hurt in the short term, but this would be an improvement for the economy as a whole because the money formerly spent on incarceration would be available for more productive uses. The same applies to the former prisoners who just might be able to return to (or start) useful employment. I simply fail to see the danger in this “warning.”

Link via John Combest.

The post Frankly, I’m Not Seeing the Downside Here appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri has twice the number of nonviolent offenders in prison [as] it did in 1994. The number of new inmates in 1994 was 4,857; in 2009 it was 7,220. The cost per inmate is now $16,456 per year or about $45.00 per day. The total appropriation to the Department of Corrections in 1994 was $216 million now it is over $670 million—an increase of over 300 percent[.] Worse yet, Missouri’s recidivism rate is 41.4 percent within two years.

Price is also concerned with inconsistencies in sentencing across the state’s judicial circuits. The average sentence for the lowest sentencing circuit is 4.5 years and for the highest circuit is 9 years.

The Chief Justice shares the same opinion that most citizens have about crime—violent, dangerous criminals need to be incarcerated—but he doubts the effectiveness of locking up first-time offending drug and alcohol addicts. Price states boldly: “We also know that simple incarceration, no matter how expensive, does not cure addiction. Treatment with strict judicial oversight does.”

If newspaper editorials are any kind of indication, the idea that we need a cheaper and more humane way of dealing with drug offenders and the like is extremely popular. Hopefully, political inertia will not doom such a worthy cause.

The post More Support for Sentencing Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to data made available by the Missouri Department of Corrections, there are 30,685 inmates (as of February 2008) incarcerated in Missouri penitentiaries, along with another 71,000 under some alternate form of corrective state supervision. Thus, with Missouri’s population hovering around 6 million, this means that about 1.6 percent of Missouri’s population is currently restricted by the DOC.

This information means nothing, though, without context. Last summer, the DOC and state officials were quick to brag about how well the state’s new recommended sentence system was doing at lowering the prison population and reducing recidivism, stating that the 2.1-percent drop from 2005 to 2006 was one of the best in the nation. However, since that time, inmate populations have begun to increase yet again, with 2007 seeing a .5-percent increase, according to the Pew Center Study.

More important than the amount of increase, though, is that inmate numbers are increasing at all in a corrections system that, like most others around the country, is becoming more and more overcrowded. Missouri’s 20 penitentiaries currently boast a capacity of 29,988 — a capacity that has already been blown past and is looking to be stretched even thinner in coming years, with the looming threat of recession.

Granted, a half-percentage-point increase in prison population isn’t as bad as that seen by Kentucky (12 percent) or Iowa (8 percent), but Missouri’s lawmakers should be looking for new methods to reduce the prison population itself — especially when, according to the report, Missouri spends only 67 cents on higher education for every dollar it spends on corrections.

I wonder: If that ratio was switched, would more than one problem be solved?

The post Don’t Take Pride in Not Being the Worst appeared first on Show-Me Institute.