The Municipal Correctional Institution is falling apart, but shutting it down might be destructive

Brenda has the weathered features of a woman who has worked Independence Avenue, selling her body for a few bucks and dulling her crack high with a bottle of alcohol. Sitting at a long table at the city jail, she twists her arms in front of her and squirms in her seat like a fifth-grader.

Her tired eyes pick up the color of the faded-green jumpsuit, but her gaze doesn't track the conversation as she answers questions. Her rust-colored hair, pulled back in a ponytail, flops from side to side as she puts an ear to one shoulder as if trying to keep warm.

Her top teeth are missing, and a rasp in her voice forces dry little coughs. "My uncle's been giving me cigarettes since I was little," she says. "And crack."

Her uncle is one of the reasons that the Municipal Correctional Institution has become a second home for the 33-year-old. This deteriorating complex houses the low-level offenders who violate city ordinances. The most common charges are possession of drug paraphernalia and traffic and probation violations. The average stay for sentenced inmates is roughly two months.

Brenda is serving a 180-day sentence for prostitution and property damage. "But I've been here a lot," she says with an odd smile. "Too many times to count."

She tells her story in bursts, her unsteady voice tripping through the episodes out of order: She grew up in Northeast Kansas City. Her mother was an alcoholic. An uncle was violent with her. By age 12, she was on the street and into drugs and prostitution. She got kicked out of high school for smacking a teacher in the back of the head with a book.

"I can't do authority," she says.

Years later, she married and had a daughter. Her mother and her sister won't let her go home, so she's not able to see her father. "He's dying of lung cancer and stays in bed most of the time," she says. "My brother tells me how he's doing."

She grabs a Kleenex from the table. As she sobs quietly, women walk out of a group meeting in an adjacent room. One inmate walks over to Brenda and holds out a stack of chocolate cookies wrapped in a napkin.

"Oh, my God," Brenda says. "You thought of me."

"Why you crying?" the woman asks.

"Just thinking about my dad, that's all," Brenda says.

But she seems to forget her despair, grinning as she eats the cookie.

Nancy Leazer, MCI's superintendent, looks on from the other side of the table. Brenda is like many of the inmates at the jail. As much as 90 percent of the population arrives at the facility dependent on drugs or alcohol. More than 85 percent of the inmates have no stable home. Between 50 percent and 60 percent of them suffer from some form of mental illness.

Most of the inmates at MCI are from the city's poorest districts, lucky to get a Legal Aid attorney, if any lawyer at all. Most wouldn't be sabotaging their probation or engaging in prostitution if they weren't feeding a drug or alcohol addiction, stuck in a cycle of crime that makes their faces so familiar here.

For people such as Brenda, the jail offers stability. Being here makes her hopeful.

"I've got my friends at my side," she says. "These people help me. I even call them up and talk to them when I'm not here."

But this place will likely be closed before Brenda is released.

The municipal jail is out of sight for most Kansas City residents. The low-slung complex is nine miles east of downtown, past industrial warehouses and up a winding road where the dusty shoulders are often heaped with illegally dumped furniture and trash. The modest brick buildings, with their generous windows, might be mistaken for a school campus if it not for the high fence tipped with barbed wire.

The rules of entry, posted on a disintegrating piece of paper fastened to the chain-link fence, have been smeared nearly illegible by rain. The fence is so weathered that even frequent guests who push the little black button are startled by the violent jerk and rattle as the gate slides open.

In the small lobby, where an attendant sits behind thick glass, candy wrappers remain crumpled on the concrete floor, and rust-colored water stains darken the white ceiling tiles. A man wearing a plastic hospital bracelet sits in a chair, his mouth signaling nervousness with a subtle clicking noise.

"I'm just resting," he says as officers pass through the lobby. They seem to know him.

Superintendent Leazer heaves open the beige-painted steel door that separates this room from the minimum-security facility. On the other side, guards prepare for their shifts, and on-duty personnel watch the inmates on monitors. There's no metal detector.

A compact woman who moves and talks with punctuated determination, Leazer exudes the welcoming authority of a tough football coach. If few cities run their own jails anymore, even fewer institutions are run by people like Leazer.

Growing up in Iowa, she was drawn to politics. While a student at the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s, she worked as an aide to Wisconsin Legislator Mary Lou Munts. In 1983, Leazer moved to municipal government, working for Madison, Wisconsin, Mayor Joe Sensenbrenner. At that post, she helped create a drop-in center for homeless schizophrenics. She came to believe that government's primary role is to act as a safety net for society's most vulnerable.