The City Justice Center’s latest commissioner, Nate Hayward, still believes in the rehabilitative power of correctional facilities. Hayward, 60, just entered his seventh month leading the infamous city jail, which has seen all kinds of issues, including a number of inmate deaths (22 in the facility since 2020, KSDK reports, with one in January on Hayward’s watch).
Hayward came to the CJC less than a month after leaving the other local CJC: the St. Louis County Justice Center. He says he could immediately tell he’d inherited an institution in deep disarray.
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“I told the Mayor’s Office [on] my first tour of here I went home and I couldn’t go to sleep because I’d seen all the things that needed to be done,” he says. “I just stayed up ‘til two in the morning and typed up a four-page assessment report.”
Hayward’s report included the need for cosmetic repairs, deep cleaning, and more time for people outside of their cells. Coincidentially, his report mirrored the findings of Doug Burris, his predecessor, an interim commissioner who served under both mayor Cara Spencer and former mayor Tishaura Jones. Burris also previously oversaw the St. Louis County CJC and served as Hayward’s mentor there. Hayward typed up his findings, frantically, before he knew of Burris’ report.
Burris is known even outside of correctional circles as something of a jail turnaround artist. When his contract ended late last summer, and he gave some seemingly mournful interviews, fatalism fell in among some about the future of the city’s jail. But Burris seems hopeful about the future of the jail under Hayward, saying, “I am [optimistic], more so than even when I took over.”
“He has one of the most disarming personalities I’ve ever seen, and in a correctional facility, that’s an amazing talent,” Burris adds.
Hayward says people are already remarking on his efforts to really fix the facility. “Since I arrived, we have been updating this jail,” he says. “A lot of people talk about, ‘Hey, what are you doing over there? Hey, he got all these contractors coming in.’” He also says his staffers are deep cleaning and re-painting the facility.
He hopes that some quality of life changes could also mean less interpersonal conflict at the jail. By rolling out tablets to the entire jail, giving one to every detainee during their stay, the number of people fighting over access to what used to be just a few tablets per pod could go down. Hayward says the jail is also in the process of installing charging stations in every pod.
Hayward says the tablets were first deployed in the “honor dorm” portion of the jail, an idea championed by Burris that Hayward says he’ll continue. He describes that wing of the jail simply as “pretty peaceful.”
Burris was one of four mentors Hayward said he worked under in his decades of corrections experience. He describes Burris as the friendlier “politician”-type, who seemed to care about others. Another was a straight-faced, strictly business-type, while another focused on rigorous documentation. “Put them all in one pot and that’s how you get me,” he says.
“Just to let you know, I’m the type of commissioner… I don’t just sit in this office, you know, I’m up in the jail helping out,” he remarks. “Sometimes, when I get here, breakfast is going on, and if people call in, I’m gonna go and help get the carts upstairs. [I] make sure that we feed these guys on time, making sure the food is still hot when they get upstairs, because that was one of the things that residents complained about.”
The CJC is currently at nearly full capacity: It had around 690 detainees when he started in September, and now has 750. The jail can hold about 30 more people, he says. He did suggest one strategy to reduce that population, which he says worked in the county. There, he said he held standing monthly meetings with judges to discuss which people can be released—something yet to be implemented in the city.
Another area of attention is the treatment of transgender people in the jail, which SLM highlighted late last month. Hayward and a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety clarified that Archer Mallon, whose lawyer said they had a difficult and dangerous stay at the facility, never made it into a part of the facility controlled by Hayward’s crew. Instead, they spent their time in custody at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s holding block.
However, the spokesperson indicated that policies for trans people in both areas of the jail were likely the same, with the goal of keeping them isolated from both the male or female wings of the jail for their own safety. That, Hayward says, is a common practice at jails nationwide.
Hayward says he’s seen people turn their life around after staying in jail and going on to succeed in business or health care. His plans to keep recidivism low involve bolstering the jail’s GED program, connecting people to counseling and recovery programs, and maintaining relationships past one’s stay at the jail to help people find gainful employment.
“You know, they have the option to get jobs,” he says of GED program graduates. “They don’t have to come back in here anymore.”
He also says he’s serious about taking the health of inmates seriously, addressing the spate of deaths in the jail, and says his team “continues to review its policies and practices to ensure the safety of residents while in our care and reviews any investigation findings to make adjustments to procedures.”
He addressed the jail’s future in terms Peter Pan might use to describe Tinker Bell. “A lot of people think that St. Louis city can’t be successful,” he says of some jail staffers who are pessimistic about the work, and the city as a whole. “I told them, ‘I believe you guys can. I believe you could do it, and I’m a new person. If I believe this, you guys got to believe it.’”
Hayward first came to Missouri on a college football scholarship to Southeast Missouri State University in 1988, he says. He hails from Jersey City, New Jersey, his office adorned with New York Giants memorabilia. He made a point to tell SLM at the conclusion of his interview that he was an accomplished football player.
“We won the championship [at] my high school in New Jersey,” he says. “We won the championship, so I’m used to winning. I’m not used to losing. I’m a sore loser.
“I don’t like losing. So, we got to be successful.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story provided inaccurate information about problems at the City Justice Center. A lack of heat was not among the recent issues. We regret the error.
