Another former inmate, Diedre Wortham, was arrested on a decade-old traffic ticket and spent 22 days in the jail, she said. She says that after being hospitalized for high blood pressure, she was denied medicine for a week.
Wortham said she breathed through a T-shirt because of mold in the jail, and stuffed shirts under her cell door to keep mice out.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it out of the Workhouse alive,” Wortham said.
All seven plaintiffs are Black. ArchCity Defenders said in the court filing that the vast majority of inmates at the jail are Black, and virtually all of them are being held awaiting trial because they can’t afford bail, mostly for non-violent crimes. A little over half of St. Louis’ residents are Black.
Blake Strode, an attorney for ArchCity Defenders, noted that the same jail was the subject of a lawsuit 40 years ago. He said the problems at the jail are further evidence of the way the St. Louis-area’s criminal justice system is destructive to poor, Black residents.
Strode called conditions at the jail “unconstitutional and inhumane,” violating constitutional provisions against cruel and unusual punishment.
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