Newly formed student group Interrogating Incarceration is joining forces with city-wide efforts to shut down the Workhouse, a medium-security penitentiary in St. Louis, for its inhumane conditions and its disproportionate number of Black inmates.

Photo by Curran Neenan

Close the Workhouse, the campaign that encompasses Action St. Louis, ArchCity Defenders, The Bail Project and the Advancement Project, is the latest manifestation of efforts to abolish the Workhouse.

According to Close the Workhouse’s action report, 99% of inmates are legally innocent, but cannot afford the bond set while they await trial. The campaign argues that the Workhouse, which costs the city $16 million annually, perpetuates the criminalization of poverty and disproportionately targets Black St. Louisans.

“The Workhouse, I like to say, is a monument to white supremacy and racism in St. Louis…” Inez Bordeaux, the manager of community collaborations for ArchCity Defenders, said. “Anytime you have 50% of the population of a city being Black, and you have 90% of the jail population being Black, what is that if not racism?”

Interrogating Incarceration’s ultimate goal is to raise awareness of criminal justice inequalities among the student body. On Feb. 11, the group invited Bordeaux to speak at their second meeting of the semester to share her personal story of being incarcerated at the Workhouse for a non-violent charge that was later deemed unconstitutional and to publicize the movement.

“The justice system, not just here in Missouri, but everywhere, is rotten to the core,” Bordeaux said at the meeting.

Alia Nahra, Interrogating Incarceration’s vice president of communications, emphasized the importance of getting the University community behind the movement because of the University’s visibility in the St. Louis area.

“I think it’s really easy for Wash. U. students to talk about things and care about things on campus and focus their lives on the academia side,” Nahra said. “Mass incarceration is such a visceral issue everywhere, but there’s so much movement around the issue in St. Louis that it doesn’t seem to make sense to just have students doing that in the classroom.”

To officially close the Workhouse, the campaign is working to secure the support of St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson, who has the power to close the Workhouse herself, and the Board of Aldermen, who control the city’s funding decisions and could cease the Workhouse’s funding. Bordeaux also called attention to Kim Gardner, who does not have the power to close the Workhouse, but has worked to decriminalize marijuana in St. Louis, which results in fewer people being sent to the Workhouse, where many detainees have been accused of lower-level crimes.

Public support of the movement from the University would likely light a fire under the Mayor’s office, according to Bordeaux.

“What we need is public pressure, public support from high-ranking, respected institutions, organizations and people,” Bordeaux said at the meeting. “It would be like a bomb went off in the mayor’s office if the chancellor of Wash. U. came out and said, ‘We support the Close the Workhouse campaign. We support decriminalizing poverty, we support reenvisioning public safety, we support investing in people and communities, not jails and police.'”

The University’s Public Affairs department did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interview with Student Life, Bordeaux recommended that college students interested in getting involved in the movement do their research before coming to conclusions.

“First thing, know the facts, because there’s a lot of disinformation out there. And this particular city administration is sowing those seeds of disinformation,” Bordeaux said. “They want people to be confused about the numbers and the reasons and why we need to close the Workhouse.”

Interrogating Incarceration is continuing to circulate a 2019 petition for the University to support the Close the Workhouse movement in order to be able to demonstrate the level of student support to Chancellor Andrew Martin at a later date.