BY: RUDI KELLER
Missouri Independent
Lawmakers voted to repeal the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, a 1988 law now seen as a property rights violation and barrier to a fresh start after prison
One of the most-watched bills approved by Missouri lawmakers this year put the state back in control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
The police takeover provisions made the bill one of the most controversial of the session, and sparked a lawsuit, set for trial Nov. 5. But tucked inside, and noticed only by those watching closely, the bill also includes bipartisan provisions ending the practice of seizing assets from incarcerated people that are unrelated to their crimes.
Known as the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, the law was passed in 1988, when any idea intended to make life harder for criminals received a favorable hearing. Now, the law is viewed as a violation of property rights and a barrier to a law-abiding life.
“We need to pay our debts to society,” state Rep. Tara Peters, a Rolla Republican, said in an interview with The Independent. “Those who have paid their debt to society should have every opportunity to have a fresh start and to get out on the right foot when it comes time to go back into society.”
Peters sponsored a bill with the repeal, as did state Sen. Stephen Webber, a Columbia Democrat. It was added to the St. Louis police takeover bill to persuade Democrats in the Senate to end a filibuster.
Once enacted, it is one of two bills that will allow people under the control of the state to keep assets they would use when released. The other stops the state from taking foster children’s Social Security benefits to cover the cost of foster care.
The incarceration reimbursement law was intended to take money from inmates to cover the cost of maintaining them in prison. The most recovered over the past five years is $523,000 in fiscal 2024, while the cost of operating the Department of Corrections is greater than $1 billion.
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, efforts to enforce the act brought in only $136,000.
“People who are incarcerated by the state should not have to pay like it’s a hotel or an Airbnb,” said Amy Malinowski, director of the Missouri office of the MacArthur Justice Center. “It’s a prison. It’s the state’s responsibility to maintain those prisons, not the people who are detained there.”
Missouri has laws allowing prosecutors to seize assets gained in a criminal enterprise, and the courts can enforce restitution for stolen or damaged property as part of a sentence. The incarceration reimbursement act allows the attorney general to seek other assets, such as a family inheritance or proceeds from the sale of a house, that are unrelated to the crime.
State Rep. Brad Christ, a Republican from St. Louis County, sponsored the St. Louis police bill and chaired a committee where Peters’ bill was discussed in February. It was an easy decision to accept Democratic requests to include the repeal, he said in an interview.
“Democrats support it from a criminal justice aspect and a number of Republicans supported this, too, because it’s just basic property rights,” Christ said.
Missouri’s prisons hold about 24,000 people. In any given year, about 11,000 will be released on parole or because they have completed their sentence. The goal of prison is to punish and to prepare inmates to live within society’s rules, Christ said.
The seized money can be an important part of avoiding a return to prison, he said.
“Whatever it may be, whether it’s two grand, 20 grand or 200 grand,” Christ said, “to knock someone down a peg while they are in prison, I thought, was a little unjust after their sentence has been fulfilled.”
Under the law, people sentenced to state prison are required to make a statement of their assets when they arrive in custody and, on release, allow the department to garnish their wages for five years.
The attorney general can file a lawsuit to seize any assets found or received by the incarcerated person.
With the repeal, the Department of Corrections is no longer requiring the statement of assets on entry, agency spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said in an email. But any current garnishments will be stopped only if the person making the payments petitions the courts to end them, she said.
At the House hearing in February, St. Louis attorney Bevis Schock, who has represented clients in civil litigation against the department, said he has won judgments that the attorney general then tried to seize.
Schock said he believes the law is unconstitutional and expected a court would rule that way in the future. But he still urged lawmakers to act.
“I hate criminals,” Schock said. “I don’t want to help them all. I want them to go to jail, but a criminal’s property should be as sacred as the property of a non-criminal.”