Individuals who use firearms to commit crimes in St. Louis County will face harsher sentence recommendations from prosecutors.
“We will no longer offer probation on any crime committed with a gun,” county Prosecutor Melissa Price Smith told reporters and members of her staff who gathered Tuesday at the Buzz Westfall Justice Center to mark her first 100 days in office. “By doing so, we hope to reduce violent crime and hopefully reduce future homicides.”
The new sentencing policy applies to homicides, shootings and armed robberies. It also includes felon-in-possession cases and drug sales if an individual is armed.
“All I can do is hope and pray that this decreases gun violence. It has to,” Price Smith said. “It’s the reason we are taking a much stronger stance on any crime committed with a gun.”
That position is not the only step Price Smith has taken to reduce violent crime in the county.
The day that Price Smith took office in January, she restarted its violent crime unit, which she said allows charging decisions to be made “in real time.” She also created a specialized homicide unit led by a former assistant federal prosecutor.
Nonviolent cases
Price Smith has taken steps to keep people out of jail when possible. There are now more than 330 low-level, nonviolent offenders on pretrial release, compared to fewer than 200 when she took office in January.
County Department of Justice Services data show that as many as 476 people were on pretrial release in June 2021. But that number is skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced jail populations across the country.
Research has shown that allowing people to live at home while a case is pending helps them stay employed and connected to family.
Price Smith said she also plans to create a traffic diversion program that will allow people with older traffic tickets to avoid convictions and points on their license by taking a driver improvement class. That will launch June 1; about 45,000 people will be eligible.
Case backlog
When Kim Gardner resigned as St. Louis circuit attorney in 2023, much was written about the massive backlog of cases awaiting charges. But St. Louis County also had a backlog problem.
When she took office, Price Smith said, there were 6,000 cases awaiting review by prosecutors. Her staff has worked to reduce the backlog by about 45%, and she expects to have it cleared by the end of summer.
While Price Smith had hoped to have that task accomplished by now, “we are not going to focus on a backlog in lieu of focusing on our current cases.”
But, she added, “I have to emphasize that everybody in the office, from the investigators, the support staff, the attorneys, our advocates, all of us are working on this backlog of cases.”
