St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones and community activists kicked off demolition of the medium-security jail known as the City Workhouse on Tuesday, marking the beginning of the end for an institution long derided as inhumane. “The workhouse is not and was not fit for human beings,” Jones told a crowd of advocates and news reporters. “Now, we make sure that no human being will be detained in this facility ever again.” The mayor offered a phone to Inez Bordeaux, an activist once held at the jail on a charge later dropped. Bordeaux gave the go-ahead to the wrecking crew. An excavator’s claw tore into a pod in the old women’s quarters, and within minutes, the pod was in pieces, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The sound of metal meeting metal was a long-sought victory for activists who started calling for the jail’s closure a decade ago. Jones’ call to close the jail in 2016, when the rest of City Hall was ignoring the issue, was a big reason activists backed her runs for mayor.
She has frustrated supporters with her handling of inmate deaths and other problems at the city’s remaining jail, and her administration’s suggestion that tiny homes for the homeless could replace the workhouse. Activists don’t think anyone should be living on such a reviled site in an industrial area. Some have said they won't vote for her again. The jail, officially the Medium Security Institution, opened in 1966 to replace a crowded and dirty South Side workhouse. It was billed as a more dignified place, with more spacious quarters and more things for inmates to do, like repairing furniture and making concrete products for the institution. In 1981, the St. Louis Board of Adult Welfare described the new jail as crowded and lacking staff. Four years later, a grand jury called the workhouse’s restrooms “atrocious,” and said inmates needed to be provided with more mattresses and blankets. Headlines in later decades highlighted inmate escapes, guards encouraging fights among inmates, and a lack of air conditioning. Problems continue at the City Justice Center jail downtown, where more than a dozen detainees have died since 2021. Inmates have complained of inadequate health care and squalid conditions.
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