ST. LOUIS — Over the past seven years, officials here have reported more than 1,700 confrontations between staff and inmates at the city’s jails. There have been riots, beatings, stabbings, and assaults on inmates and guards.
But city reports on use-of-force there show that, of all those incidents, just nine resulted in injury.
Only one was severe enough to send someone to the hospital. The other eight got simple first aid.
And there wasn’t a single use-of-force injury recorded at either of the city’s jails since 2019.
Attorneys, activists and a former alderman all said the numbers don’t add up.
“I think it’s ridiculous,†said Maureen Hanlon, an attorney with the legal nonprofit firm ArchCity Defenders. “It’s deeply unserious.â€
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City officials began filing monthly jail data reports in 2017, after years of complaints about cleanliness, pests and sweltering heat, especially at the city’s old Medium Security Institution, known as the workhouse. Aldermen insisted the reports provide the public with important information about jail demographics, including mental health care, deaths, suicides and contraband seizures.
The jails became a key political issue during Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ 2021 mayoral campaign. She pledged to improve conditions, reduce inmate populations and close the workhouse.
Still, even after the workhouse closed, complaints continued to pile up about the downtown jail: Inmates jimmied locks, broke out of cells, rioted and attacked guards. Advocates have protested a string of detainee deaths, deplorable health care and officials blocking access to inmates.
Inmates set bedding material on fire, dropping them from broken windows at the St. Louis City Justice Center after a guard was assaulted and fires were set at the facility on Feb. 6, 2021.
Jones has pledged to revamp health care, upgrade the facility and improve staffing levels, much of which has already begun.
But it appears the have never fully captured inmate violence and the jail’s response to it.
City officials say the reports are accurate — but they only track instances where guards use force on inmates, not the other way around, and therefore don’t track guard injuries, they said. And while they classify the use of pepper spray as a use of force, they don’t consider it as causing injury.
They also noted guards have used force less in recent years.
“The Division of Corrections remains committed to transparency and the accurate reporting of all ‘use of force’ incidents,†said corrections spokeswoman Jamella Brown. “We will continue to evaluate our practices to ensure full adherence to the requirements of (city ordinances).â€
But former Alderman Joe Vaccaro, who sponsored the board bill to publish the reports, said the data doesn’t make sense.
“To be honest with you,†he said, “I don’t believe it.â€
A call for transparency
Advocates and inmates have complained about the conditions at city jails for decades.
In the 2010s, two workhouse guards were charged with setting up fights between inmates, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that the workhouse had one of the highest rates of sexual misconduct among jails in the country and the ACLU filed suit alleging they ignored an inmate’s HIV-positive diagnosis.
In 2017, advocates filed suit against the city alleging “hellish and inhumane†conditions at the workhouse. Officials had recently installed temporary air conditioning units after the cooling system had gone out during a sweltering summer. Calls to close the workhouse got louder.
Aldermen took note. Vaccaro worked with community leaders to craft a bill requiring jail officials to file monthly reports that included information including inmate demographics, mental health care, suicide attempts and hospital transports.
One of the categories was intended to measure use-of-force incidents “between a uniformed member of staff and an inmate.â€
Those uses of force were separated into three categories:
- Serious injury — also called “Use of Force A†— is an incident that results in an injury requiring medical treatment beyond the use of over-the-counter medicine or minor first aid. It could be multiple abrasions, a cracked tooth, a broken bone, loss of consciousness, a concussion or require admission to a hospital.
- Minor injury — “Use of force B†— results in an injury that doesn’t require hospitalization or medical treatment beyond over-the-counter medicines or first aid.
- No injury — “Use of force C†— results in “no injury to staff or inmatesâ€
Jail officials filed their first report in October 2017. It included two minor injuries from uses of force and 20 where no injury was caused.
The next report from November 2017 included one minor injury and 18 uses of force without any.
The only report to contain a major injury from a use of force was in December 2017.
After that, officials reported minor injuries in February, March and December 2018. The last one was reported in June 2019.
Since then, a jail spokesperson said, the number of uses of force overall by jail staff on inmates has been going down. The reports say nobody has been injured.
At the same time, reports of violence in the jail were making headlines.
Riots, attacks, stabbings
In April 2021, two inmates were charged with punching a jail guard in the face as he tried to break up a riot. Charges said the corrections officer was treated at a hospital for his injuries.
Three months later, jail officials said several inmates and staff members were injured during a fight between inmates in the jail’s recreation area. Officials said inmates were beating each other, and then when staff arrived to break up the fight, the detainees threw various objects at them.
In 2022, an officer was stabbed in the face during an uprising at the jail. Police said two detainees attacked the guard with a “homemade sharp object,†and he was taken to the hospital for treatment.
Civilian jail board member Darryl Gray addresses the media about the situation where a jail guard was taken hostage inside the St. Louis city justice center on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. Behind Gray are other members of the civilian jail board, from left, Janis Mensah, Mike Milton, and James Dahm.
In the summer of 2023, a jail guard was federally indicted for assaulting and injuring a handcuffed detainee. Court records say the guard pepper-sprayed a man twice in the jail’s medical unit then bent the man over, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the inmate’s neck.
A couple months later, multiple inmates held a 70-year-old jail guard hostage for several hours, officials said. The guard was wheeled out of the jail on a stretcher.
But none of those incidents were counted in the city’s reports.
Most of them, city officials said, did not meet their definition of “use of force†— because inmates attacked guards, and that category in the reports doesn’t include guard injuries.
In the case of the fight between inmates in the recreation area, they said, the detainees injured each other.
And the city didn’t classify the jail guard’s alleged assault on the inmate as an injury from a use of force because “there was insufficient evidence†to support it during a preliminary review, officials said. The guard hasn’t been convicted. His case is set for trial in March.
The city has also reported dozens of times where jail staff pepper-sprayed inmates — often in the face. Most of the detainees were taken to the facility’s nurse for treatment, but the jail still classified them as “no injury.â€
City spokesman Conner Kerrigan said Tuesday that was because detainees were treated with water and not medicine.
Hanlon, the ArchCity Defenders lawyer, has sued on behalf of several detainees who say the city overuses pepper spray. And she said the use of those chemical agents absolutely caused injuries. Some detainees, she said, reported experiencing asthma, seizures or burning long after they were sprayed. One man claimed in a report that the substance was burning his skin.
“I just don’t know what else you would call it (but an injury) if you’re locked in a room filled with a chemical agent that’s burning you,†she said.
Rev. Darryl Gray, the chairperson of the city’s civilian jail oversight board, said it was impossible to know whether the numbers are accurate because city officials, for years, stopped board members from getting into the facility to speak with inmates or staff.
If the jail’s numbers are correct, he said, St. Louis would be a “model for detention centers and institutions across the country.â€
“But knowing the culture as I do,†he said, “it causes me to wonder if in fact those points are accurate.â€
A corrections officer at the City Justice Center is accused of opening a jail cell so that two inmates could go inside and beat a fellow inmate on March 22, 2021. Surveillance video from inside the jail appears to show the officer watching the beating and not intervening.
