Staffing shortages prompt temporary Missouri prison closures
March 17, 2021
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ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) Two Missouri prison facilities are temporarily closing and relocating inmates because of statewide staffing shortages.
The St. Joseph News-Press reports that 75 inmates are being transferred from the minimum security Kansas City Reentry Center to the Western Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in St. Joseph and the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron.
The low-security Cremer Therapeutic Community Center in Fulton also is also temporarily closing, and all 43 offenders are being transferred to Fulton Diagnostic, Reception and Correctional Center.
Staff from the closed facilities will be moved to the larger prisons, where they can be used to help reduce overtime, Karen Pojmann, communications director for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said in an email.
Staffing shortages prompt temporary Missouri prison closures
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Staffing shortages prompt temporary Missouri prison closures
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Originally published on January 27, 2021 10:40 am
When Keith Brown tries to describe the 25 years he spent in prison, he keeps coming back to one word: congested.
From the chow hall to the bathrooms, there’s no escape from the constant press of bodies a feeling that “nobody should ever experience,” he said.
Last spring, Brown was incarcerated at Farmington Correctional Center in eastern Missouri, and as inmates began testing positive for the coronavirus, the 8-by-11 cell he shared with another man felt even more cramped.
“You and your cellie, you’re right there together,” he said. “He s touching everything; he’s breathing and coughing and blowing his nose. It’s really hard to break that cycle of infection.”