Corrections

More and more Missourians are waiting in jail for services from the state’s mental health department, which has a backlog of more than 500 people with stalled cases. Hear what mental health directors are telling state lawmakers.

In a prison system rife with drugs, a new civil rights lawsuit accuses the Missouri Department of Corrections of punishing people for addiction, rather than treating it.

The legislation makes it easier for juveniles to be tried as adults and sets strict requirements for how long inmates must be imprisoned before they're eligible for parole.

"We're talking about constitutional rights in someone's dying moments," one advocate said.

For years, the Missouri Department of Corrections cobbled together death records from multiple sources. New data reveals, for the first time, that hundreds of people died in state prisons between 2018 to 2024.

Judy Henderson spent 35 years in prison for a murder conviction, despite maintaining that she was innocent. Freed by the Missouri governor, Henderson's new autobiography “When the Light Finds Us,” documents the cruelty of the state's prisons and what it took her to keep going.

Families of incarcerated people in Kansas were long able to take out a newspaper subscription in a person’s name and have it delivered to a state facility. The Kansas Department of Corrections changed that policy without notice, claiming safety concerns but causing confusion.

Lawmakers voted to repeal the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, a 1988 law now seen as a property rights violation and a barrier to a fresh start after prison.

After the May release of "The Quilters," which followed incarcerated men who make quilts inside a Missouri maximum security prison, the Department of Corrections announced that it was “overwhelmed” with donations.

Re.Use.Full not only provides drop off points where Kansas Citians can donate their gently used goods, but it also sponsors free, pop-up repair shops with volunteers who will fix your appliances and other household goods so they don’t go into a landfill.

Deaths in Missouri prisons have increased in number despite a drop in the number of people incarcerated. The Missouri Department of Corrections says says in-custody fatalities are mainly due to natural causes among an aging, sicker prison population.

The Missouri Department of Corrections is giving few details, but advocates say the removal of the South Central Correctional Center warden occurred after an investigation into how contraband is entering the prison.