ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – After a revolving door of justice service directors, a new man is now in charge of the St. Louis County Jail.
After just 46 days on the job, Kito Bess sat down for his first television interview.
“I don’t believe in sitting in the ivory tower, so to speak, and at the desk pushing paper. In my opinion, if you want to know what your staff is doing, you’ve got to be involved and on the floors,” he said.
Bess recently moved his family to Missouri from Minnesota, where he most recently worked with U.S. probation and pre-trial services. Here in the St. Louis area, he hopes to bring stability. His first mission is to talk directly to his employees.
“I don’t want to just go to senior leaders, my middle managers and start coming up with a road map for the future of the Justice Services department. You need to listen to your staff,” Bess explained.
It’s a promising message to corrections officers like Melba Patton, who said, “I think it changes the way you feel. You feel like you want to work. You’re at a place you’re appreciated and that’s sometimes hard at a jail.”
Patton supervises female inmates who work in the laundry room. It’s an area that has long been a success story in the county jail. It can be seen how the eight-hour shift instills a work ethic and promotes teamwork among people who will be released.
“I get a lot of communication about wanting to come down here and work for me and I think it’s because it helps the time go by,” Patton added.
Bess says he’s driven to find ways to help inmates be able to succeed and stay out of trouble when they are released.
“This is like that ministry where you know where you’re out to want to help people, you want to make good for society,” he said.
Bess has known this was his calling since he was in middle school, after his relative, a police officer, was killed in the line of duty in Miami.
“He was always out in the community serving people, working with the youth. To me that has always inspired me and throughout high school, that’s all I’ve done,” he said.
The public may soon see him recruiting help as jails across the region are struggling to find staff.
“Not just bring people on board,” he said. “But also making sure they’re people of quality, because we don’t want to just get into a hiring frenzy.”
His Justice Services Department isn’t just inside the jail. It involves those under court supervision, like defendants on ankle monitors or those free on bond. Bess hopes to build a team invested in protecting the public.
“I don’t want people to see this opportunity as a job. I want them to look at this as a long-term career,” Bess said.
