A Year in 16B

Jail should not be a death sentence.  Since April 2022,  six people have died while detained inside St. Louis City’s Justice Center (CJC)  : Robert Lee Miller (April 28, 2022), Augustus Collier (July 8, 2022), a person whose street name was Nelly Boo (August 10, 2022), Donald Henry (September 3, 2022), Courtney McNeal (September 6, 2022), and one person whose name and date of death is unknown. 

Although the causes of these deaths remain shrouded in unnecessary mystery, each day members of Freedom Community Center’s CourtWatch witness the actors of the 22nd Judicial Circuit (judges, prosecutors and others) laying the foundation for torturous state violence to be enacted on our community members. 

In the past year, FCC’s CourtWatchers observed the systemic injustices of the pretrial process, arbitrary bail requests and the unjust pretrial detention of people legally presumed innocent in the 22nd Judicial Circuit in St. Louis, Missouri. The consequences of these injustices can be life and death. 

As the chorus of voices, made up of those incarcerated at the City Justice Center (CJC), their families and loved ones, civil rights advocates, defense attorneys, community members and even survivors of violence has grown louder,  demanding action in the face of tortuous conditions at CJC , the actors in the 22nd Judicial Circuit have turned their backs on the people they supposedly represent. They have doubled down on inhumane pretrial practices. 

For example, the Circuit Attorney’s Office (CAO) recommended that people be held without bond 88% of the time. In fact, if it were up to the CAO at least 263 more people would have been jailed without bond from June 2021 to June 2022. This would have increased the jail population by nearly 50% in the last year. 

Disproportionately, the people targeted by this system are Black and poor. Over 85% of the accused people were Black despite Black people making up only 45% of St. Louis City's population. The criminal legal system continues to target Black and poor people at alarming rates.

Judges and prosecutors consistently cite “public safety” as the dominant reason for their recommendations and decisions in bail hearings. There is little evidence, however, that pretrial detention and incarceration produces public safety. In fact,  there is growing evidence  that incarceration makes violence even more likely in our communities. Incarceration makes our communities less safe. 

In total, we witnessed 1,315 people cycle through 1,810 bail hearings from June 2021 to June 2022. We saw 1,315 people's lives and futures dramatically altered by a hearing that lasted an average of 10 minutes. 

Importantly, we also observed the ways the decisions made in the courtroom affected the lives of the thousands of people who care for and love the 1,315 people who went in front of a judge in the past year. Jail not only hurts the people being caged, but the  entire community of people around them . 

This report provides a window into the shadowy areas at the front door to the criminal punishment system known, in St. Louis, as Division 16B, the courtroom where bail hearings take place. The report provides a window into the way the decisions made in that courtroom affect the lives of people who are our neighbors, friends and loved ones.  

The data we collect are more than simply numbers on a page. The data reflect the lived experiences of people targeted by the criminal punishment system in our city–targeted by the criminal punishment system in our names.

 _{A note on language: So much of what we see in court is a system set up to punish someone accused of a crime, whether or not they are innocent. In an effort to destigmatize and respect the assumed innocence of those facing charges we use the word “accused” rather than “defendants” and “complaining witness” instead of “victim”. While retelling stories from court, we use pseudonyms to protect the identity of the accused and their loved ones.}  

 _{For those unfamiliar with the criminal legal process: check out this  resource , which provides a look into the various components that make up the machinery of criminal legal proceedings.}  

FCC COURTWATCH is a group of community members under the umbrella of Freedom Community Center, an organization dedicated to building a movement of survivors of harm that will meaningfully address violence in St. Louis City and collectively design alternatives to state systems of punishment. Our community will fight to end mass incarceration and advocate for transformative justice approaches to reducing harm.

Sign up to be a CourtWatcher  here . Donate to support our transformative work  here .