Acting corrections chief outlines programs, staffing shortfall and medical contract increase at budget hearing

Acting Corrections Commissioner Doug Burris told the Board of Aldermen’s Budget & Public Employees Committee on May 21 that the City Justice Center holds roughly 750 detainees and that the department has expanded education, treatment and reentry programming even as it faces staffing and contract cost pressures.

Burris said the jail population has risen about 40% in four years and remains around “750 to 800” people most of this year. At the hearing he emphasized the department’s shift toward programming: GED classes in partnership with St. Louis Public Schools, a vocational “Safe Serve” food-handling certification, an opioid intervention program and new partnerships for veterans’ services, reading programs and unlocked computer labs offering certification tracks.

Why it matters: the department says programming reduces recidivism and connects detainees to services on release, but operations are constrained by vacancies and rising medical costs.

Burris told the committee that one-quarter of detainees have been diagnosed with a serious psychiatric illness and are on medication, “1 in every 8 detainees are there charged with murder,” and “1 in…