BRECKENRIDGE, Mo. • Cory Booth met his wife on a snowy day in Trenton, Mo.
Then 18, he was at drug rehab, and on furlough from a misdemeanor jail sentence for theft. It was visiting day, and Booth’s mother couldn’t make the trip.
In walked Shaelee Moore. She was there to see her dad.
“I figured, why not talk to the pretty girl?” Booth remembers.
They’ve been married 10 years now. They live in Breckenridge, a tiny Caldwell County town of about 300 people in northwest Missouri. They have four children. She works at a local hotel. He takes care of the kids. They’ve done the math. It makes more sense than him getting a low-paying job and spending a majority of their income on day care.
On the day we talked, it was snowing again, and Booth was heading to court. He is scheduled to go there, and appear before Caldwell County Associate Circuit Court Judge Jason Kanoy, once a month. Why?
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Because 11 years ago, when he was in high school, he stole a lawn mower.
It was the summer of 2007, and Booth was a self-described knucklehead. He dabbled in marijuana. He got into trouble. A friend fingered him for the lawn mower theft, and he spent two nights in the Caldwell County Jail. It was his first time in jail. His cellmate was in on a federal warrant for bank robbery.
“I stayed awake all night,” Booth says. “I was scared.”
He pleaded guilty and Kanoy gave him a year in jail but suspended the sentence. He was placed on probation for two years with a private probation service that could drug test him anytime, at his cost. By November, he had violated his probation. He did seven days in jail and received a bill for his time there. In January 2008, he violated probation conditions again. Kanoy sentenced him to 10 days in jail, and told him he could serve his time on weekends.
In November 2008 he was arrested again on a probation violation. He was held in jail on $5,000 cash-only bail. Kanoy told him he had to serve a year in jail.
Booth doesn’t blame the judge for his problems. In fact, he likes Kanoy. Over the past 11 years they’ve talked often. He believes the judge has given him second chances, and some good advice.
“I messed up on probation,” he says. “It was my fault.”
Still, he doesn’t think it makes sense that he’s still hauled to court once a month with the threat of jail time if he doesn’t show up or doesn’t pay.
His jail bill started small enough, $80 for his first two-night stay.
“Thank you for your business,” the bill says.
Then came the $400 bill, and $2,791, and $3,531.
By July 2009, when his probation should have been over and his connection to the court system severed, Booth owed $7,325.
He thinks the bill is down to about $5,000 now, and every month he tries to make a $50 payment. When he doesn’t have it, he has to go to Kanoy’s courtroom and explain.
It has been that way now for 11 years.
“It’s held me back from a lot of different things,” Booth says.
At one point he planned to enlist in the Army. Kanoy told him he wouldn’t be able to do that if he didn’t first pay his board bill.
So every month he makes a decision.
“It’s groceries or pay the judge,” he says.
This is the reality for a lot of poor Missourians in rural parts of the state who end up on the wrong side of the law. Long after they’ve served their time and paid their fines, by private probation companies that have built-in financial incentives to find probation violations, and judges who are all too willing to serve as debt collectors. Pay the bill, or debtors prison awaits.
It is a problem that threatens the independence of the judiciary, says Lisa Foster, a former judge and Department of Justice official who is a co-director of the .
“The idea that you pay for the privilege to be in jail is absurd,” Foster says. “There should never be a charge for jail.”
But what her co-director Joanna Weiss calls the “poverty penalty” is alive and well in many rural Missouri counties. Weiss, an attorney and educator, served on the American Bar Association task force that in August aimed at ending the sort of practices that have Booth still answering to a judge and facing the possibility of jail time on an 11-year-old charge.
“It’s crazy,” Booth says. “They make probation so hard so they can violate you. The system is the problem. It’s a vicious circle. It’s horrible.”
This week, his kids are sick. The first winter storm of the season will do that to a family. Booth showed up to court and explained his predicament. Now he has to come back and appear before Kanoy again before the end of the month.
“I spent my judge money on medicine for the kids,” Booth says. “It’s a rob Peter to pay Paul situation, and Judge Kanoy is Paul.”
Jailed for being poor is Missouri epidemic: A series of columns from Tony Messenger
Tony Messenger has written about Missouri cases where people were charged for their time in jail or on probation, then owe more money than their fines or court costs.
The Pulitzer Prize board considered these columns when it decided to award the prize for commentary to metro columnist Tony Messenger.
In a twist of irony, one judge no longer calls them “payment review hearings.” Instead, he’s even more direct. Now they are called “debt colle…
“The jail is emptying out. People that do come in are able to bond out quickly. None of the girls here are being held for financial reasons. T…
In a case of civil contempt — such as when a judge jails a reporter for not revealing a source, or an attorney for failing to follow an order …
Even with the state’s top court making progress in eradicating the practice of putting people in jail because they can’t afford to be in jail,…
“There are a pile of cases where people owe us money,” the judge told the defendant, a painter, who said he was having a hard time finding wor…
No longer, the court said in one voice, can judges in Missouri threaten indigent defendants with jail time for their inability to be able to a…
Disparate treatment of people charged with crimes offers a glimpse into a fundamental problem in the application of criminal justice in Missou…
Weiss wants the Legislature to make it illegal for counties to charge defendants for their time behind bars.
“How can they cancel a court date then issue a warrant without even telling you the new court date?” Sharp wonders.
His bill would stop the practice in Missouri of state police agencies avoiding state jurisdiction by seeking asset forfeiture under guise of f…
"He sat in jail because he was poor," public defender Matthew Mueller said of his client.
The two defendants are Exhibits A and B of why Missouri has become the front line in a national war on poverty and the courts.
She knows what she did was wrong. She knows she should have been punished.
“It's been a hard road,” she told me recently. “Really hard.”
For decades, Missouri’s corrections budget has been rising. So has its prison population, with a “tough on crime” philosophy filling prisons w…
“We’re hamstringing the very people who we want to go out and get a job,” Lummus says. “It’s self-defeating.”
In his regular appearance on the McGraw Milhaven show on KTRS radio, Metro columnist Tony Messenger discusses his ongoing debtors' prison series.
He did his time. Then he got the bill: $3,150 for his stay behind bars.
A year-end update on some of the cases Tony Messenger wrote about during 2018.
The primary difference between the poor people who have been “terrorized” in Edmundson or Jennings or Ferguson, compared with those in Salem a…
The Court of Appeals in the Western District of Missouri determined that the practice of using the courts to try to collect board bills is ill…
Some counties in Missouri don't charge board bills. Those include the most urban counties in the state: both the city and county of 50ȻƵ,…
I did my time and then some. This is how they get people. They keep them on probation and then if they don't pay their board bill they violate…
By 2009, Rapp was behind in her payments and the court revoked her probation. She did a couple of days in jail and her cash bond of $400 was a…
Every week in Missouri, a judge somewhere holds a crowded docket to collect room and board from people who were recently in jail. The judges c…
“I don’t see why he has to keep going to court every month,” she says. Sharon uses her Social Security income to try to keep him out of jail. …
Because Precious Jones was late to jail, prosecutor and judge seek to add to her sentence.
The Missouri Supreme Court and Missouri Legislature should revisit their 2015 and 2016 efforts to reform courts. More work is necessary.
Other than now being required to meet federal standards for that drug testing, private probation companies face nearly no oversight in Missour…
“I messed up on probation,” he says. “It was my fault.” Still, he doesn’t think it makes sense that he’s still hauled to court once a month wi…
Murr owed Dent County about $4,000 for her “board bill” for the 95 days she had been jailed.
The domestic violence victim, Gaddis says, wouldn’t make a report to police because she feared going to jail herself and losing her child.
“They make you jump through hoops,” Bote says, “and then they keep moving the hoops higher.”
William Everts stole from a church. Almost immediately, he knew it was a bad idea.
Bergen has the sort of back story that would inspire one of the movies or television episodes based in the Ozarks that seem to be all the rage…
Clark ended up spending 495 days in county jail awaiting a trial that still hasn’t come.
Pritchett first called me last year, after I wrote about a St. Francois County woman who was sent to prison for failing to pay court costs. He…
Rob Hopple had been in jail since May after falling behind on payments on an ankle bracelet. Court dates kept coming and going, with the prose…
The bills are that high because the two criminal defendants couldn’t afford to pay for an initial sentence behind bars for relatively minor of…
“The practical reality is that people are being arrested for being poor,” Mueller says. “And there’s nothing they can do about it. They just s…
At least twice in recent years, the Missouri Supreme Court has overturned harsh sentences issued by a judge after she sent people to prison so…
Branson, in early 2018, was in Desloge, Mo., now, living with her 15-year-old son, checking in with her parole officer, hoping never to go bac…
Officially, Victoria Branson’s probation was revoked because she never paid the state the past due support and the court costs, which rang up …