ST. LOUIS (AP) - A halfway house in downtown St. Louis is a concern for business leaders and residents who worry the area has become a destination for parolees fresh out of prison.
Their concerns are now amplified following Corrections Director George Lombardi’s announcement that the state’s only other community release center located in Kansas City will be turned into a prison, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (https://bit.ly/1Jzukc8 ) reported.
Kansas City business leaders had lobbied for the conversion, arguing that placing a large number of parolees with a high recidivism rate all at one place threatened $6 billion of capital investments made in downtown Kansas City.
The state department said the offenders at the Kansas City facility will be “transitioned into the community using other alternatives and resources,” raising questions if the offenders there will wind up in St. Louis.
But the mayor’s chief of staff, Mary Ellen Ponder, reassures that they have been promised by Lombardi that won’t happen at the city’s facility which has a 550-person capacity.
“Even if they intended to send us more, they couldn’t because there’s not the capacity for them,” Ponder said.
A spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections declined to comment to the newspaper and denied a request for an interview with Lombardi.
The centers are designed to reintroduce parolees back into society. Offenders assigned to the facilities live there while they look for employment and obtain any necessary drug abuse treatment. Many residents are free to leave during the day but are required to return at night.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said police have been called to the city’s facility 31 times so far this year for a variety of complaints.
“It’s worth taking a look at the impact on downtown,” Dotson said.
The state also operates seven smaller and differently defined “supervision centers” in St. Joseph, Farmington, Hannibal, Kennett, Poplar Bluff, Fulton and Kansas City.
___
Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, https://www.stltoday.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.