Credited to: Courtney Curtis, Guest Columnist
THE NEED FOR REAL OVERSIGHT STARTS WITH A REAL STRUCTURE
By Courtney Curtis, Guest Columnist
Earlier this month, I wrote that the Detention Facilities Oversight Board cannot do its job with five of nine seats vacant. That remains true. In addition, a sixth seat is serving past its expired term. The board is operating without stability, and that must be corrected immediately.
But filling seats alone will not solve the deeper issue.
St. Louis does not just have a vacancy problem. It has a structural oversight problem.
When deaths occur in custody, the public hears familiar phrases: investigation underway, policies under review, corrective steps forthcoming. Yet repeated tragedies suggest something more fundamental is missing. The city lacks a compliance system that operates before crisis, not after it.
Oversight should not be reactive. It should be continuous.
A functioning model would require automatic transparency:
- Mandatory public notice within 72 hours of any serious in-custody incident
- Independent clinical mortality review completed within 30 to 45 days
- Publicly filed corrective action plans within 30 days
- 60-day implementation reports documenting compliance
- Automatic oversight review triggered by measurable thresholds, not by public pressure
If medical emergencies cluster within a short period, review should activate automatically.
If restraint durations exceed policy limits, oversight should engage immediately.
If reporting deadlines are missed, hearings should occur without delay.
That is not politics. That is governance.
Corrective timelines must run independently of litigation strategy. Clinical review cannot wait for criminal investigations to conclude. Oversight should not require a vote each time it needs to function.
Modern public administration operates on trigger models, predefined thresholds that initiate review before tragedy compounds. St. Louis should do the same.
The Detention Facilities Oversight Board also requires structural protection:
- Automatic interim appointments when vacancies persist
- Dedicated independent staff support
- Guaranteed access to incident data, medical logs, and preserved video
- Compliance certification tied to budget accountability
- Third-party audit automatically initiated if multiple deaths occur within a 12-month period
Oversight that depends on outrage is not oversight.
Oversight that activates only after loss of life is too late.
The Mayor and the Board of Aldermen must not only fill the seats. They must codify a continuous compliance framework into ordinance.
Constitutional protections do not end at the jail door. The Eighth and 14th Amendments impose affirmative duties once someone is in custody. Those duties require systems, not statements.
Accountability should be written into law, triggered automatically, and enforced consistently before another family receives a call that cannot be undone.
Courtney Curtis
St. Louis
