STEELE: A PRISON THAT NEVER CAME TO BE

STEELE -- You will find in Steele no overt signs of a town threatening to be ahead of its time.

The population of this Pemiscot County community is 2,395, not much different than the count taken 24 years ago. Like many rural towns, its main business area features some vacant storefronts. There is a garment factory and a few small industries to offer non-farm jobs, and a Piggly-Wiggly that pulls in shoppers from neighboring villages, from Cooter and Holland and State Line.

Some here believe the potential of Steele, which sets a couple of miles off Interstate 55, was never tapped. And when they trace back this idea, one stretch of local history is central to their discussion: the awarding of a maximum security prison to the town in July 1970, and later the rescission of that award.

There was a time when communities frowned on the state locating a penitentiary in their backyards; they did not care to be known as "prison towns."

Today, prisons are seen as an economic development prize. Billboards were erected in Fredericktown in recent weeks to welcome a search committee looking to find a site for a new women's prison. Across the river, the residents of Tamms, Ill., and Alexander County launched a full-scale promotional campaign in their successful bid to land a super-maximum security prison.

In the late 1960s, civic leaders in Steele bucked the thinking of the time and made a full-throttled pitch to state officials when talk of a maximum security prison arose.

Like the prison sweepstakes today, local incentives were offered. The city council deeded public land to the state that might have been sold on the market for $200,000. By a 458-73 vote, Steele citizens approved a bond issue totaling $480,000 to pay for infrastructure improvements at and around the site.

City fathers saw in this investment not a prison, but an employer that would put 203 people to work and carry a beginning annual payroll of more than $600,000. They also saw development of local support services, including a motel-restaurant complex to accommodate visiting families and attorneys.

Those were the plans. Today, the land where a prison groundbreaking was held in 1971 stands empty, just off Route 164 on the way to Hornersville. The support services never came because there was nothing to support.

By varying accounts, the Steele prison proposal died because of unfortunate geography, changing politics and shifting penal philosophies.

Ed Aumon, mayor of Steele in the early 1970s and one of the plan's advocates, recalls it now as merely a shame.

"This would have been a little boom town," he says. "Now, it's just existing."

A friend in Jefferson City

Steele is tucked deep into the Missouri Bootheel, one of the southernmost towns in the state, seven miles above the Arkansas border and about 90 miles down Interstate 55 from Cape Girardeau.

Behind Caruthersville and Hayti, it is the third biggest town in Pemiscot County, which carries the dubious reputation of being one of the poorest counties in Missouri.

In a 1993 report released by Citizens for Missouri's Children, Pemiscot ranked last among 114 counties in the evaluation of living conditions for young people. More than 50 percent of Pemiscot County residents under age 18 live in households whose income is below government-defined poverty levels.

The county unemployment rate is typically in double figures.

People in this part of the state like to say they are closer to several state capitals than they are to Jefferson City, which is a six hour drive. It would take a Steele resident less time to get to Jackson, Miss., about 290 miles down the interstate.

It is for this reason that Bootheel officials often complain of being cut off by state government ... out of sight, out of mind, they insist.

In 1970, however, the Bootheel had a sympathetic soul in the governor's mansion. Warren E. Hearnes was from Charleston, understood the isolation felt by communities and counties outside the central corridor of the state, and had a solid grounding in the problems facing rural areas.

With this background, he showed no hesitancy to carry out the recommendation of his corrections director in a manner that unsettled many people in Jefferson City and the metropolitan areas: Hearnes supported Steele as the site for a maximum security prison. The state board of public buildings -- composed of the governor, Lt. Gov. William S. Morris and Attorney General John C. Danforth -- formalized the recommendation in July 1970.

Hearnes recalled last week that the decision wasn't a tough one. "It was the best offer," he said from his home in Charleston. "It was a real good package."

Of the 58 sites in the running for the prison, Steele was the only one to offer to donate land. It was 200 acres of a tract that had once been owned by the federal government. An airfield had been constructed there for the training of pilots during World War II. When the war ended, the airfield and land around it were given to the town.

While the soil in this tract was gumbo and not the easiest to work with agriculturally, the land might have fetched $1,000 an acre on the open market. By contrast, one of the site finalists, 240 acres near Columbia, was offered for sale to the state for $720,000.

Not everyone in Steele voiced enthusiasm for the prison. Some in the community worried about their safety in case of escapes. Farmers saw no benefit to them in the proposal and feared the job opportunities made available locally would force higher wages for agricultural workers.

John F. Holmes, one of the most vocal opponents, lived within a couple of miles of the site and just didn't want prisoners as neighbors.

"Those who lived there close by were against it and the business people were for it," Holmes recalled during a telephone interview from his home in Bermuda Dunes, Calif. After working at the Dolphin Cotton Gin 31 years, eventually as its manager, he moved to California in 1983.

Holmes helped organize a local petition drive to halt the prison plan. He was also on the phone to Jefferson City. "We were going after the big boys," he said last week. "We were trying to talk to the governor."

This wasn't the only headache for local supporters. The land around the airport was rented by the city to farmers, and the rental income was used to maintain airport facilities. With 200 acres removed, airport revenue stood to be reduced dramatically.

The five-member airport commission balked, claiming among other things there had been no consultation before the land was offered to the state. Aumon exacted a rather extreme measure of mayoral prerogative.

"I dissolved them," he said last week.

Indeed, the Steele board of aldermen abolished the commission for what Aumon told a newspaper was "unnecessary bickering."

It did little to quell the controversy. Charles Pritchard, chairman of the airport commission, said at the time, "Frankly, it looks like if you can't agree with city hall, you're out."

An expert in these matters

Though the legislature had not appropriated funds for prison construction, groundbreaking for the Steele project was held on March 2, 1971. An editorial in Kennett's Daily Dunklin Democrat called attention not only the bitterly cold weather in which the ceremony was held, but the absence of such dignitaries as Gov. Hearnes, local state Rep. Vic Downing and local state Sen. J.F. Patterson.

Present, however, was Department of Corrections Director Fred T. Wilkinson. The maximum security prison was his brainchild.

Hearnes recalls that Wilkinson was one of the most gifted men to serve in state government during his two-term administration. The number-two man in the federal corrections system, Wilkinson left that post when he was passed over for the top job. When a search committee turned up Wilkinson's name to direct Missouri prisons, Hearnes knew he had found a diamond.

"We were real lucky to get him," says the former governor.

Wilkinson believed that a strain could be removed from the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, which weathered four incidents of confrontation and near-riot conditions in 1969, by transferring 300-350 of the most hard-core inmates to a new maximum security facility.

Betty Hearnes, former first lady and a state representative who chaired the Joint Committee on Correctional Institutions and Problems, explained, "These were the hard cases and lifers who had nothing to lose by causing trouble."

Many corrections experts from around the state doubted the Steele site was appropriate for this new prison, saying the rural community lacked adequate medical and legal services to support the facility.

A prison newspaper in Moberly compared the proposed prison at Steele to the one in rural Attica, N.Y., which had months before erupted in violence that left dozens dead.

Others questioned the concept itself, voicing the opinion that "warehousing" prisoners was an outmoded idea; this faction favored an emphasis on rehabilitation and treatment, plus a less disciplined confinement.

Gov. Hearnes remembers that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch "took up the hue and cry" on the idea of a maximum security prison.

"I think they were more interested in inmates than they were in the efficiency of the corrections system," says the former governor.

Despite the naysayers, the Steele proposal was moving ahead. On Oct. 22, 1971, a news account said that Wilkinson was prepared to ask the legislature for $9 million to construct the prison.

Wilkinson retired a few months later, but his replacement as corrections director, William G. Miller, was fully behind the Steele plan. In a news story, Miller described himself as a "plain old country boy" and called a maximum security prison his "absolute top priority."

On April 6, 1972, state Rep. Downing wrote in The Steele Enterprise: "At long last, I believe the citizens of Steele and of Pemiscot County can be assured that there will be a maximum security prison located at Steele." The cost of the project at that time had risen to $10-12 million.

Change of administration

Former Gov. Hearnes and former Mayor Aumon believe the Steele project became doomed on Nov. 7, 1972, when Republican Christopher S. Bond beat Edward L. Dowd for the Missouri governorship.

"The county was Democratic and he (Bond) just took it away," says Hearnes.

Aumon adds, "It was just a political deal. ... If a Democrat had been elected, there would be a prison here now."

On taking office, Bond appointed George Camp to head the corrections system, which by 1974 had lost its "department" status in a reorganization effort. Camp was described in the 1983-84 State Manual as "a controversial eastern academician" who favored greater inmate freedom, more training programs for prison personnel and inmates, and a search for alternatives to incarceration.

In an Malden appearance in July 1973, Gov. Bond said, "I think in today's society our highest priority in the criminal justice field should be rehabilitation and the prevention of criminal repeaters. Secondly, I think a rural location would further compound the mistake of constructing another maximum security institution in Missouri."

The Republican governor proposed regional facilities in urban areas. Ultimately, a medium security prison was constructed in Pacific (the Eastern Correctional Center) and dedicated Aug. 24, 1981.

Mrs. Hearnes points out that the community of Pacific was half-hearted in its support for the prison and that its first years were marred by infrastructure problems, particularly sewer complications.

Changing times

In his State of the State Address in January, Gov. Mel Carnahan told the General Assembly that he supported construction of a 1,200-bed women's prison in eastern Missouri to replace the flood-destroyed Renz Correctional Center in Jefferson City, plus other new prison space to turn back the rising tide of violence in the state.

"I want the message to be clear for chronic offenders -- if you've done the crime, in this state you will do the time," said Carnahan in his speech.

A $750,000 study commission by corrections officials last year indicated that if trends continue and state laws on sentencing don't change, an additional 10,482 prison beds will be needed by 2003. Missouri now has beds for 16,565 inmates.

Carnahan proposes asking voters to approve $250 million in general obligation bonds for construction of state facilities. About $91 million of the money would go for prison projects.

What goes around, comes around

With the recent call for more prison space for violent and persistent offenders, Gov. Hearnes sees it as "somewhat of a vindication" for the Wilkinson plan.

Aumon served four years as mayor of Steele and finds himself on the ballot again this spring. The retired mortician is running for Ward 2 alderman. His campaign slogan: "If it's good for Steele, I'm for it."

He still laments the opportunity lost when the Steele prison never materialized. "We thought everything was in line, but it just got dropped," says Aumon.

From his California home, Holmes says he doesn't believe the loss of the prison was all that detrimental to the community. The townspeople, he said, remained civil throughout the controversy.

"I don't think much about it now," says Holmes.