City Justice Center’s Staggering Staff Vacancy Rate Causes Big Problems

A former staffer says even healthcare problems at the jail can be traced back to a lack of workers

Dec 11, 2023 at 8:33 am

Activists hung a banner across from City Hall in September 2023. RYAN KRULL

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Last month, St. Louis officials announced that in the wake of a rash of deaths at the City Justice Center, they were changing healthcare providers.

"Ensuring the health and wellness of individuals detained at the City Justice Center remains a top priority," the mayor's office said on November 30, announcing that as of the next day, the nonprofit Physician Correctional USA would handle healthcare at the jail.

But someone who worked at the jail tells the RFT that many issues with healthcare for detainees were less about the previous provider, YesCare, and more about a bigger problem at the jail: chronic understaffing.

That's because detainees who wanted to see a doctor or a nurse practitioner needed to be escorted to the medical unit on the second floor by a corrections officer, and often no corrections officers were available to do so.

The former staffer says the shortage of corrections officers curtailed "anything when detainees had to get out of the cell," including physical exams and dental work, which required detainees to have access to a dentist's chair. The former staffer asked the RFT to not use their name for fear of harming future job prospects.

The number of empty positions at the jail bolster the former employee’s claim. Data compiled by the city's Department of Personnel for a recent Board of Aldermen committee meeting shows that Corrections is authorized to have 307 positions, but that 183 of those spots are unfilled — meaning that the agency's vacancy rate would stand at around 60 percent, if those numbers are accurate.

However, it is notable that the numbers from Personnel don't include any position categories in the jail that are 100 percent filled. It's unclear why that data was omitted and presumably if it had been included it would lower the percentage of overall vacancies.

We reached out to the Department of Public Safety for comment and will update the story when we hear back.

The entity best positioned to know the specific number of jail staff is keeping that number close to their vest. Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah has remained mum on the extent of those shortages, citing security concerns. In a sit-down interview last month with KSDK, reporter Christine Byers asked if the jail was still down about 30 to 50 officers, the number of vacancies Clemons-Abudullah inherited when she took on her role.

Clemons-Abdullah responded: "Well, I suppose it's a little bit more than that."

That seems to have been an understatement.

Earlier this month, Alderwoman Cara Spencer asked the city's Director of Department of Personnel Sonya Gray to speak at a Budget and Public Employee subcommittee meeting about vacancies among all city agencies. Gray produced a report that showed that the City Justice Center's 183 vacancies were the highest of any department other than the police.

"I'm really concerned about this high level of vacancies, especially in light of ongoing tragedies at the Justice Center," Spencer tells the RFT. "And I've asked Gray to verify those numbers."

Most notably, the numbers show there are 126 vacant “Corrections Officer I” positions of the 198 that the jail is authorized for. The vacancy rate at the “Corrections Officer II” position was significantly better, with only eight vacant positions out of the 28 authorized.

The former staffer who spoke to the RFT says that the staffing situation seemed to get noticeably worse after the hostage incident at the jail in August, which proved to be the first of a series of bad headlines for the jail. The staffer says that employees seemed to be leaving more quickly and were not getting replaced.

Given concerns about drug overdoses at the jail, the former staffer was also surprised to often see no one staffing a first-floor checkpoint, the second of two such checkpoints that all employees must pass through before going anywhere in the facility above the first floor.

The former staffer says the checkpoint tended to be staffed at the beginning and end of the day shift. "But there was often no one to staff it in the middle of the day," they said. "People could leave for lunch and come back with whatever."