ST. LOUIS 鈥 City officials said Wednesday they have completed $7 million in upgrades and repairs at the downtown jail, including replacing faulty cell locks that allowed several uprisings and protests in the facility last year.
Detainees at the downtown jail will be moved into the upgraded cells on the third floor of the City Justice Center beginning Friday, interim Public Safety Director Dan Isom said.
The renovation work now shifts to the fourth floor, and then the fifth and second floors, Isom said. Altogether, the work is estimated at $20 million.
During an August meeting of the Citizens Advisory Committee for Capital Expenditures, Isom said about 70% of that total should go toward cell locks and a new control system for the downtown jail, which opened in 2002.
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鈥淎fter decades of neglect, the city is working to upgrade outdated facilities and invest in our department of corrections to ensure our corrections officers and detainees are safe and secure,鈥 Isom said Wednesday.
While the issue of the faulty locks took center stage amid a string of high-profile detainee protests last year, the previous jail commissioner confirmed staff had known about the faulty locks prior to the start of the pandemic.
Isom and jail Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah took members of the news media into an unoccupied third floor pod Wednesday morning. Isom said he believes it was the first time the city had allowed journalists access inside the jail and noted it was part of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones鈥 effort to increase government transparency.
The two-floor pod was lined with bright yellow doors encircling a common area with metal picnic tables in the middle and a doorway to a small recreation room in the back. Unlike in the previous floor plan, the correctional officer work space and command center is elevated and mirrored to increase security for the officers.
In addition, a sally port was added so correctional officers can more easily provide detainees with things like medication and mail.
Clemons-Abdullah said three TVs will be installed above the tables for the detainees. They鈥檒l be able to listen to the TV through individual radios with headphones, decreasing the noise level and allowing officers to hear more clearly when there are disturbances or problems.
鈥淭he changes are huge, don鈥檛 get me wrong, but I think being fair, firm and consistent is going to play a bigger role,鈥 Clemons-Abdullah said.
On Wednesday, Isom confirmed that 23 people were being detained at the Medium Security Institution, commonly known as the workhouse, in a space he referred to as the City Justice Center annex.
Jones made a campaign promise to close that facility, which she did in June. However, about two months later the city moved roughly 120 detainees back to the facility in the wake of uprisings at the downtown jail on Tucker Boulevard. The six-story downtown facility has a capacity of 860 inmates.
Isom on Wednesday said there was no timeline for when the workhouse would be shut down but the city remains committed to closing it and working with the community to establish a new use for the Hall Street site.
The two city officials also noted the jail is still severely understaffed, even with the recent hiring of six correctional officers.
The commissioner said the jail is looking to hire at least 50 more officers, but would add 60 to 70 if there were enough applicants.
鈥淲e are facing labor crunches like many other employers across the nation,鈥 Isom said.
For now, the jail is contracting with a security company to fill those gaps.