'I feel like a slave': St Louis' workhouse denounced as a modern-day debtors' prison

A campaign called #closetheworkhouse describes ‘unspeakably hellish conditions’, but officials defend it as a ‘kind-of rescue’

Inez Bordeaux was at times left broke, homeless, and living in a halfway house over the years of unpleasant interactions with the criminal justice system in St Louis, Missouri. But the only time she ever felt hopeless was during the month she was incarcerated in the city’s infamous “workhouse” jail in 2016.

“I might not come out on the other side of this,” Bordeaux recalled thinking to herself. Her first three days were spent in solitary confinement after staff witnessed her crying, and deemed her a suicide risk.

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