PRISONS NEAR RIOT CONDITIONS OF 1954

JEFFERSON CITY -- This week marks the 40th anniversary of Missouri's worst prison riot.

The inmate uprising occurred at the maximum security penitentiary here and caused millions of dollars in destroyed property and facilities.

Four decades later, the state is facing a crisis that threatens not only any progress that has been made since 1954, but creates a major public safety headache for officials of the Department of Corrections.

Acceding to public demand for longer criminal sentences, legislatures, including Missouri's, have voted record sums for new prison construction, as well as larger amounts to cover escalating maintenance costs of existing prison cells.

Whatever increases have been made in penal budgets over the past 10 years have, more often than not, been inadequate to cover rapid increases in population. Again, Missouri is no exception.

Although Missourians went to the polls last month to approve a $250 million bond issue that called for $115.8 million of the total to go for new prison beds, progress toward this goal has been halted, at least until November, when voters will decide the fate of the tax-limiting Hancock II amendment.

In announcing a temporary halt in new construction to house an increasing number of inmates, Gov. Mel Carnahan said he was doing so because passage of the amendment would mean fewer prison beds and might even have an impact on staffing existing facilities.

The popularity of adding more prisons to house more and more criminals wasn't lost on sponsors of the bond issue, who zeroed in on the need for new beds in final-week television commercials just before the Aug. 2 election. Many observers agree this tactic produced the small plurality required for passage of the bond issue in crime-infested urban areas.

Whether Missouri is able to add new prison beds or not, the situation at the moment is at least somewhat similar to the one that caused the riots that began Aug. 22, 1954, when as many as three inmates were crowded into cells that were originally built for a single prisoner.

Although such extreme overcrowding is rare today, conditions are far from luxurious at the multiple-prison sites operated by the state.

For example, last year's floods effectively caused the closure of the former Renz across the Missouri River from the state capital.

This has brought about overcrowding in other facilities that already are at capacity, creating inconvenience that officials say is the germ of future rioting.

Canceling any further construction, at least for the moment, has brought about emergency moves that probably wouldn't pass inspection in federal courts, department officials conceded.

For example, to handle some of the overcrowding, the state converted a former factory building at the Algoa Correctional Center, just outside Jefferson City.

Most of the women prisoners housed at Renz are currently being kept in the minimum security unit of the Central Correctional Center, also near the state capital.

Unfortunately, the central unit is under a U.S. court order and cannot exceed the population cap set by a federal judge.

The balance of the bond issue funds were to be spent, according to Budget Director Mark Ward, on new beds at the former St. Joseph State Hospital, which has been down-sized in recent years because of population declines in its services region.

Without any immediate relief from new construction, the Department of Corrections is attempting to meet the challenge of an exploding prison population by utilizing the 9 percent increase in funding it received for the current fiscal year that began July 1.

The agency's appropriation for prisons and probation and parole services rose to $235.9 million in fiscal year 1995 from $216.7 million fiscal 1994.

Any joy that might be gained from the increase in total funding evaporates, however, with recognition of an annual 6 percent increase in inmates, a number that will shortly escalate as tougher sentencing laws enacted by this year's General Assembly go into effect.

The increase in funding is also diminished by inflationary increases of basic food items and medical care over the past 12 months.

What has worried corrections officials, even if the new prison construction is finally approved, is their ability to receive funding for new staffing to handle the ever-growing inmate population.

Fear that funds wouldn't be forthcoming to meet anything beyond minimal staffing was expressed by several officials.

They explained that the cost of opening new beds went beyond adding new security personnel, since ancillary staffing was as critical to the department's mission as those who maintain law and order within the walls.

And, they said, even longer sentencing laws will have an impact on the department's division of probation and parole, which currently is understaffed and overworked.

(Next: Missouri's miserable national ranking.)