Mensah founded the “Justice for Janis” coalition, which advocates for the city to drop charges against them and seeks to educate individuals on prison abolition. (Courtesy of Janis Mensah)

Janis Mensah became interested in prison abolition as a student at WashU but not under the circumstances that one might hope. Mensah, who is Black and uses they/them pronouns, was a junior in college and lounging on the grass outside of the Chick-fil-A on the Central West End when security guards approached them.

“They started harassing me about how I can’t sit in the grass and I could tell they didn’t believe I was a student at WashU,” Mensah said. “One of the security guards threatened to shoot me, and then they handcuffed me.”

When the security guards contacted the Washu Police Department (WUPD) about the incident, which occurred in 2019, the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards alleged that Mensah had violated several codes, including “unauthorized entry” and “disturbing the peace.” ArchCity Defenders, an advocacy organization where Mensah had previously been an intern, wrote a letter to the office saying that they would defend Mensah. In response, Student Conduct immediately dropped all charges.

Aside from fueling a distaste for WashU, the situation also catapulted Mensah into the world of community organizing and abolitionism.

“I really very strongly felt like it did not matter at all if I had hurt anyone or committed a crime,” Mensah said. “[The security guards] just saw me, didn’t like the look of me, and that could have just started my series of interactions with the criminal justice system.” 

Since their graduation in 2019, Mensah has worked with a variety of local nonprofits in the hopes of helping individuals who were once in a similar position to them — including Organization for Black Struggle and Keyway Center for Diversion and Reentry, the latter of which assists incarcerated women. Mensah is also an in-class guest speaker at WashU for Rachel Brown, who is an Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

For many years of their life, Mensah has been an advocate for youth and adults facing incarceration. Since 2023, that meant advocating for themselves, too.

At the time, Mensah was vice chair of the civilian jail oversight board, created by St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ administration to “oversee criminal accountability investigations” at the St. Louis City jail, otherwise known as the St. Louis City Justice Center (CJC). Despite initial promises that the board would be “authorized to review complaints” by inmates and given “access to city detention facilities upon request,” Mensah said that the city blocked them from receiving complaints and regularly denied board members access to facilities when requested.

“We had times where there were two deaths in two weeks, and the city just wasn’t doing anything about it,” Mensah said. “It felt to me like they were more interested in protecting the city from legal liability than making changes and protecting the community from fatalities.”

According to St. Louis Public Radio, there have been 18 deaths in the CJC since 2020 — three times as many deaths as the similarly sized Jackson County jail in Kansas City, and three times as many deaths as the St. Louis County Jail, which holds more inmates on average.

On Aug. 31, 2023, Mensah visited the CJC after work to confirm reports that inmate Terrence Smith had died earlier that day. Officials told them to wait, and Mensah did so for hours. The next people they spoke to, however, were the police.

“When the police get there, within five minutes they knock me unconscious,” Mensah said. “I was in and out of consciousness until [I got to] the ER early the next day.”

Video footage shows Mensah being ripped from the bench and wrestled to the ground by two officers, who then dragged their limp body out of the facility. Mensah said they had a seizure and woke up covered in bruises, as well as a citation for “trespassing” tucked into their bag.

Following the arrest, Mensah founded the “Justice for Janis” coalition, which advocates for the city to drop charges against Mensah and educate individuals on problems within the St. Louis prison system. Since its inception, the coalition has received almost 300 petition signatures and gained the sponsorship of 20 different organizations, including the American Party of Labor and the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee. 

“[This experience] has helped connect me with different organizers, advocates, and activists that are aligned with abolition and maybe just hadn’t engaged with it before,” Mensah said.

Mensah speaks about abolition at a local teach-in. (Courtesy of Janis Mensah)

Caption: Mensah speaks about abolition at a local teach-in. (Courtesy of Janis Mensah)

While Mensah doesn’t know exactly what an abolitionist future would look like, they do know there needs to be a shift of focus towards the root causes of criminality, rather than focusing on its punishment.

“It’s hard for people to understand how abolition is supposed to work, but it’s hard for me to understand how the current system is supposed to work,” Mensah said.

A few months after their arrest, Mensah resigned from the jail oversight board in a letter that said the CJC should close and Mayor Jones should resign.

“Eventually I left the board because people kept dying, and I realized I could do nothing about it,” Mensah said. “After my family saw the video and saw the police punching me on the ground, I couldn’t keep putting my mother through that and with just nothing to show for it.”

About a year and a half later, Mensah is scheduled to go to the jury trial sometime this coming May, though the exact dates have yet to be decided. Mensah says that whether they decide to sue the city depends on the outcome of this trial.

On a day-to-day basis, Mensah continues to engage in community advocacy, this time balancing the “Justice for Janis” coalition, too.

Cara Spencer, St. Louis’ new mayor who was sworn in earlier this week, has previously pinpointed CJC failures to a severe understaffing, and points to staff expansion as a solution to overcrowding. Mensah, however, attributes overcrowding in CJC to over-arresting.

While Mensah said that Spencer’s election brought “new hope” that their own charges would be dropped, they expressed concern about the mayor’s potential impact on mass incarcerations and jail conditions in St. Louis.

“Even if Cara Spencer was saying all the right things, it would still be scary, because Mayor Jones said all the right things at one point — and not only did she not live up to those promises, she made things worse,” Mensah said.

When asked how they keep optimistic, Mensah laughed.

“I don’t think optimism is essential to being an abolitionist. I think what keeps me going is that I know we can do better — not only because we all deserve better, but because St. Louis is doing so much worse.”

Editor’s Note: This piece was edited on Thursday, April 17 at around 3 pm to reflect that Mensah was not asked to leave the CJC on Aug. 31, 2023. They were told to wait for answers and then the police came in and arrested them. A correction was also made to specify that Mensah was originally charged with “unauthorized entry” as a college student, not “vandalism.”