VANDALIA, Mo. — Before she headed to prison earlier this year, Tonya Honkomp started preparing for her future.
She spent a fair amount of time trying to fix up a house given to her by a family member. It was an old house in Park Hills, and it needed a lot of work — plumbing, electrical, roofing. She made some progress but not enough.
Her meth possession charge from a traffic stop in 2022 would have her locked up for a while, so Honkomp decided to sell the house.
The money from the sale would help down the road, after she got out of prison and raised a baby girl. She was pregnant before entering prison and is due to deliver the baby in October.
“I literally have no other money,†she told me in a phone interview last week from the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia. “Everything I had went into that house. This was all I had, and it was supposed to be my safety net for when I got out. It’s me and this baby. I don’t have anything else out there.â€
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Honkomp, who turned 36 on Friday, talks about the money in the past tense because she no longer has access to it. After the house sold, the title company sent her $19,000 check to prison. Then in April, Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office filed a legal action to seize the money and use it to pay for some of the cost of Honkomp’s prison stay.
Bailey is using a law that previous attorneys general have used: the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act. It was passed in the late 1980s, along with similar laws in most states, as the drug war and “tough on crime†trend swept Congress and state legislatures. The “pay-to-stay†law was intended to save taxpayers money by having lawbreakers pay for their time in prison.
In reality, the MIRA law generates a pittance of the state Department of Corrections budget — far less than 1% in most years. The bulk of the money comes from poor defendants who don’t have the resources to fight the state.
Clayton attorney Bevis Schock is trying to do something about that. He represents Daniel Wayne Wallace, an inmate sued this year by Bailey over $12,000 in insurance proceeds Wallace received after his mother died. Wallace planned to use the money after his prison stay for a place to live, to help land a job and to take care of his family.
In legal filings in which he seeks to get a judge or the Missouri Supreme Court to declare the MIRA law unconstitutional, Schock argues that the state has no right to Wallace’s “grubstake,†calling Bailey’s move an illegal seizure of property.
Whatever it is, the process has Honkomp frustrated and befuddled.
“It makes me very angry,†she told me. “Nobody will tell me anything.â€
Last month, she wrote the court and asked for help getting an attorney, or at least somebody to explain what’s happening. In court, an assistant attorney general argued that, unlike a criminal case, Honkomp doesn’t have the right to a “free†attorney. Cole County Associate Circuit Court Judge Christopher Limbaugh dismissed Honkomp’s letter, saying it wasn’t clear what she was asking for.
Honkomp was very clear when I spoke to her. She wants an attorney. She wants somebody to help make sure she has money when she gets out of prison so she can take care of her baby. She’s asked a case worker to explain the paperwork; she told me the case worker reads from a prepared document that basically explains she can’t provide legal advice.
“They won’t even let me defend myself technically because they won’t take me to court,†she says.
Indeed, in most MIRA cases, an attorney for Bailey’s office appears before the judge. No prison inmate appears, and the judge writes in the file, “Respondent appears not due to incarceration.â€
That’s what happened to Honkomp on her most recent court appearance. Eventually, if she doesn’t show up or an attorney doesn’t show up on her behalf, the state will seize the money it’s already frozen.
Honkomp’s baby girl is due in October. Her first visit before the parole board is in November. She hopes to get released on parole next spring.
Honkomp isn’t certain what’ll happen when her baby is born. In 2022, the Missouri Legislature passed a law to create a nursery in prison for pregnant inmates, but it’s not scheduled to be up and running until 2025. Honkomp hopes to be free by then. Once out of prison, she plans to live with her baby’s grandmother, at least temporarily, depending on whether she has money to restart her life. Missouri’s attorney general stands in her way.
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do,†she says. “I was planning on having that money to help me and my baby.â€