[Merging the city of St. Louis with St. Louis County will not stop white supremacy] New report details racist municipal court system in St. Louis County

WashPost

Last month, I posted a long investigation of how the 80-plus municipal courts and 90-plus municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty by extracting money from residents for minor infractions such as moving violations, occupancy permit violations, business permit violations and code violations. It’s a system built on a history of racial discrimination, one that supports far too many towns and the public officials who work for them considering the size of the county, and one that makes the survival of some of those towns contingent on issuing an extraordinary number of citations, arrest warrants and fines.

The system weighs most heavily on the poor, who are less likely to have legal representation. Those without attorneys are more likely to be swept into the cycle of accumulating fines and arrest warrants. And of course, those fines and court costs amount to a much higher proportion of a poor person’s income. Compounding all of this, most municipalities in the county derive most of their revenue from a sales tax. Poorer towns are less likely to generate revenue from a sales tax. That makes them more reliant on the municipal courts for revenue.

Now the nonprofit organization Better Together has put out a report offering a lot more detail on all of this. As the name suggests, Better Together advocates merging the city of St. Louis with St. Louis County, or at least merging many of the services between the two entities. In the past the group has been more about producing data and research than advocating explicit policies, although this report does more of the latter. The group’s data and work also suggest support for the idea of merging or eliminating a good number of St. Louis County’s tiny towns.

The report begins with an overview of the problem:

Missouri’s framework for municipal-court oversight provides administrative power to a presiding judge in each of the forty-five circuit courts of Missouri. While this mechanism for oversight appears sound, in a highly fragmented region such as St. Louis County, it becomes completely untenable due to the sheer number of courts.

To put this in perspective: A judicial circuit in Missouri contains 8.6 municipal court divisions on average. St. Louis County’s circuit contains 81 municipal court divisions. So, the presiding judge of St. Louis County’s circuit courts must oversee nearly ten times the number of courts and judges as an average presiding judge in Missouri. This significant flaw in the oversight structure manifests itself in a number of problems.

One such problem is the prolific collection of court fines and fees in the St. Louis region. In 2013, the municipal courts of St. Louis City and County collected $61,152,087 in fines and fees. During that same time, the combined total of court fines and fees collected by Missouri municipal courts was $132,032,351.63. This means that the municipal courts in the St. Louis region accounted for 46% of all fines and fees collected statewide, despite being home to only 22% of Missourians.

Further analysis revealed that St. Louis City accounts for 5% of Missouri’s population and 7% of municipal fines collected statewide, while unincorporated St. Louis County accounts for roughly 5% of Missouri’s population and 5% of Missouri’s municipal fines and fees revenue. This seems logical. However, while the combined populations of the 90 municipalities in St. Louis County accounts for only 11% of Missouri’s population, those municipalities bring in 34% of all municipal fines and fees statewide ($45,136,416 in 2013).

Municipal courts are used most frequently as a revenue stream in municipalities north of Olive Boulevard and within the boundary of I-270. In fact, 20 of the 21 municipalities that derive at least 20% of their general budget from fines and fees are located in that geographic area. [MORE]