The panel established by Gov. Mike Kehoe to write rules for how long people who break the law must stay in prison may be violating the law itself by meeting in secret.
As one of his first acts as governor in January, Kehoe ordered the Department of Corrections and the Division of Probation and Parole set up a working group for a comprehensive study of parole rules. The group is to work toward “the goal of providing clarity, transparency, and accountability for the parole process.”
The only time the 15-member panel has met in public was June 13, when it held a 25-minute public hearing in the Capitol Building. Since then, it has met three times without posting any notice of the time or place of the meeting or allowing the public to attend.
The next meeting is Sept. 18, when according to one member the panel will present ideas in writing for inclusion in the working group’s report, due Oct. 1.
“The working group is violating the Missouri Sunshine Law,” Amy Malinowski, Missouri director of the MacArthur Justice Center, said in an email to The Independent. “According to general counsel for the (Department of Corrections), they do not prepare agendas for or minutes from meetings. Nor do they publish notice of any meetings, whether open or closed. (It is) cruelly ironic since one of the things Gov. Kehoe asked this working group to focus on was transparency.”
Malinowski wrote several emails in July to the Division of Probation and Parole asking for notice of upcoming meetings.
“Please be advised we are following all guidelines for this executive order and offered more than what was required by hosting an open public forum and creating a special email account for constituents to submit concerns and requests,” Glenda Owens, executive assistant to the Parole Board, wrote in reply.
When Malinowski responded by stating the working group needed to follow Sunshine Law guidelines for meeting notices, Owens disagreed.
“No public notice is required as it is not an open meeting,” Owens wrote.
A governmental body subject to the Sunshine Law must post a notice of the time and place it intends to meet, with an agenda of items to be discussed, at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting.
To hold a closed meeting, the body must first meet in public, with an agenda that cites specific exemptions in law that allow for closed meeting discussions. The body must hold a roll-call vote to go into a closed session.
The Sunshine Law also specifically includes “any advisory committee or commission appointed by the governor by executive order” in the definition of public governmental bodies.
That specific statement, said Dan Curry, legal advisor to the Missouri Press Association, makes the working group “subject to all Sunshine Law requirements.”
The Department of Corrections disagrees.
Spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said in an email to The Independent that parole board staff believe “the working group meetings are not public meetings/hearings.”
The executive order “does not require public hearings to be held — only to ensure that the working group includes a variety of stakeholders, including members of the public and formerly incarcerated people,” Pojmann said. “The public hearing held June 13 was an effort to get input from the public, as was the establishment of the email address for collecting public comment. Four meetings have been held so far, with a fifth planned for next month.”
Having the working group meet in secret violates the spirit of Kehoe’s executive order as well as the Sunshine Law, Malinowski said.
“It’s doubly concerning, because one of the specific issues they’re supposed to be working on is transparency,” she said. “How can we take seriously their recommendations with regard to transparency when they’re not taking seriously a very clear legal obligation regarding transparency?”
A spokeswoman for Kehoe did not respond to a request for comment.
Working group issues
Missouri has about 24,000 people incarcerated in the 19 adult prisons, with new admissions and releases each running at more than 11,000 per year. The Division of Probation and Parole had 13,809 men and women under parole supervision at the end of June 2024, the most recent data available.
In the brief public hearing, advocates for incarcerated people called on the group to bring more predictability to parole hearing dates, provide more feedback to people denied parole and shorten the time between a hearing and a release date.
They also asked the working group to look at how new interpretations of existing rules have added years, and sometimes decades, to the time required before parole eligibility.
The boundaries on the working group’s recommendations are things that can be done through revisions to regulations. Tony Helfrecht, the chairman of the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, is leading the working group and he said at the public hearing that it would not be considering recommendations for changing state law.
The regulations define the portion of a sentence that must be served before parole eligibility. They also define the structure of parole hearings such as who can speak or have representation, and the conditions a person on parole must meet to remain out of prison.
Helfrecht’s vice-chair is Trevor Foley, director of the state corrections department. Six other members are corrections department employees or members of the state parole board, and five represent the judiciary and law enforcement. Two public members, including Courtney Everett, program coordinator for the St. Louis University Prison Education Program, were previously incarcerated.
In an interview last week, Everett said the working group has met twice, in July and August, and will meet again on Sept. 18. He said he has asked for more public sessions, especially so people who have dealt with the parole system can testify.
“I’m just hearing stories that are blowing my mind, but everyone needs to hear it, and it’s difficult for me if I spent the hour with the mom, to take the notes and represent that in a Zoom meeting,” Everett said. “That’s just too hard for me to do.”
Everett said he was concerned that the working group would have an anti-inmate bias when he saw the list of members.
“I went into this with a lot of trepidation, because I didn’t think we would be heard, but I feel like everyone’s listening,” Everett said. “I feel like everyone’s open-minded.”
The public should know what issues the working group considers important and what resources are being used to address them, Malinowski said. The MacArthur Justice Center has identified several areas to work on and she presented them at the public hearing.
“Who knows when we’ll get another opportunity like this to take a hard look at the regulations and change things?” Malinowski said. “Even the chairman himself described it as a once in a decade opportunity. So I want assurances that they’re making the most out of that opportunity, and, right now, I have none.”
Next steps
Everett said in an interview that he would like the working group to get an extension on the Oct. 1 deadline.
“This is something that should take longer than a few months,” Everett said. “It’s just so much. There’s so many layers to it. We can’t do it in six months.”
The MacArthur Justice Center is weighing whether to take legal action over the Sunshine Law issues, Malinowski said.
One barrier, she said, is that the lawsuit would take far longer than the time left before the working group issues its report. The department has stopped responding to her on the open meetings questions, she said.
“They are not posting public notices of meetings. They are not preparing agendas for meetings,” Malinowski said. “They are not maintaining minutes of meetings. Yet these are all things the Missouri Sunshine law requires them to do. How, then, can we have any confidence in the forthcoming recommendations from the group?”
