#NOMOREJAILDEATHS Response to Justice Center Crisis and St. Louis City NAACP report:

#NoMoreJailDeaths campaign, composed of Something Must Be Heard, Empower Missouri, and Freedom Community Center, appreciates the attention the St. Louis City’s NAACP report brings to the deaths of people in custody, medical neglect, failures of oversight, and the need for federal review.

But, facts from the report on the City Justice Center released in September by the St. Louis NAACP’s raise serious questions about medical care, accountability and the decisions that put and keep people in jail.

The campaign and many other Black organizers in St. Louis the past several years have fought the criminalization and confinement of Black people. We fought cash bail. We fought the Workhouse. We fought abusive jail conditions. We fought the idea that poverty, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, or simply being accused of a crime should condemn someone to a cage.

So we fundamentally disagree with its diagnosis of this crisis. We reject any framework that allows the consequences of mass incarceration to become an argument for greater investment in incarceration.

We need more answers before diagnosing the issue as a lack of jail space. 

Cohesiveness vs. Accountability 

The report repeatedly emphasizes institutional cohesiveness. We believe accountability must come first. Cohesiveness without accountability is institutional cooperation without institutional responsibility.     The civil rights tradition did not teach us to make cages function better while ignoring the machinery filling them. 

It taught us to confront the machinery itself. 

The crisis at CJC cannot be understood simply as a problem of staffing, coordination, medical space, or jail capacity. We have to ask who is being arrested?  Who is being charged? Who is being denied release? Who is being held pretrial? Who is being denied medical care? And why are people who could safely return to their communities ordered to remain behind bars?

A jail approaching capacity does not automatically mean St. Louis needs more jail capacity. It should force us to ask why so many people are being incarcerated in the first place.

 People Are Dead. We Need Accountability.

The NAACP report documents disturbing institutional failures, and serious gaps in the review of deaths and communication between medical providers and Corrections leadership.

The report noted at one point there were 66 sheriff officers a day standing guard at hospitals in St. Louis. Not the best use of city resources. We the taxpayers fund the salaries for people whose job it is to investigate death, but the NAACP’s report notes these police and jail officials never requested or thought to ask medical staff in the jail for a death report. Even the police department wants to explore classifying all deaths as civil crimes and not criminal, which we wholeheartedly disagree with. 

These are not minor administrative failures.

It’s why at least 22 people have died while in custody at the City Justice Center since 2020 but we as well as their families know every little about these people. Before St. Louis spends another dollar expanding its capacity to incarcerate people, the public deserves to know why people have died in city custody and who is responsible for the failures that allowed those deaths to happen.

Stop filing the jail

We agree with the NAACP that there needs to be a standing referral process for every in-custody death to the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office and a formal medical review.

The NAACP also hit the nail on the head in identifying charging practices and the lack of investment in pretrial services as contributing factors in this crisis. But this report gives relatively little attention to examining current charging, warrant and detention practices before moving toward an analysis of jail capacity. These cannot be secondary considerations while jail capacity becomes the central question.

They are the central question.

You cannot underfund the infrastructure required to divert, treat, house, heal, and support people, then use the consequences of that underinvestment as evidence of failure.

The City NAACP is no stranger to the systemic injustices of all classes of Black St. Louisans. Its contributions to housing, education, and economic justice are part of St. Louis’ civil rights history. We recognize this legacy and the organization's commitment to addressing racial disparities.

So the organization should understand that fallacy in which jail capacity is based undermines decades of organizing by Black St. Louisans and our allies who fought to close the Workhouse, challenge cash bail, expand pretrial services and diversion, and confront the criminalization of Black people.

A careless error printed in the NAACP's report states that the only court order concerning medical conditions was one required a haircut.

Through more than a year of CourtWatch, Freedom Community Center has documented more than 150 instances involving medical concerns among people detained at CJC, including judges ordering medication, medical evaluations, and treatment.

The #NoMoreJailDeaths campaign rejects jail expansion as the answer to the crisis at CJC.

We support independent investigations of deaths in custody, federal review, transparent medical death reviews, and accountability when government institutions and contractors fail people in their custody.

We also demand greater investment in pretrial services, diversion, community-based mental health care, violence intervention, housing, treatment, and the infrastructure necessary to safely reduce the number of people incarcerated at CJC.

The woman referenced in the NAACP report has a name. Demetria McDile.

Members of our campaign have stood alongside Demetria McDile’s family as they grieve and demand answers. Freedom Community Center stepped in to pay for her memorial services, provided counseling and support, and advocated alongside her family with city officials.

Demetria’s family has yet to speak to the NAACP, but we learned alongside them that the nurse and corrections officer were fired who ignored the concerns of Demetria as she pleaded for her life. According to the NAACP report, audio and video captured those interactions and a wrongful death lawsuit is expected.

Her family should not have learned critical information surrounding her death through the release of a public report. That is not transparency. That is irresponsible, dismissive and harmful. 

We agree that every in-custody death should trigger a formal medical review and independent investigation. But accountability after death is not enough. We must confront the conditions and decisions that continue putting people in danger.

The crisis cannot be diagnosed solely by talking to the institutions responsible for operating the jail.

Listen to the people inside. Listen to their families. Listen to what is happening in courtrooms. Listen to the organizers who have spent years fighting these systems.

St. Louis has tried incarceration for generations. We know where that road leads.

Black liberation cannot mean building a more functional cage. Civil rights cannot mean accepting mass incarceration and negotiating over its square footage. Our communities deserve more than a better jail.

The people deserve freedom. The people deserve care. The people deserve accountability. The people deserve to live.

No more jail deaths.