ST. LOUIS -- Kirk Hough enjoyed his first cup of Starbucks coffee in 16 years. The store on South Grand Boulevard was out of the dark roast he craved, so the barista gave him another coffee for free. He put $3 in the tip jar.
Hough doesn't have many vices. He doesn't drink or smoke or take drugs. That makes him relatively unique among the clients of the Criminal Justice Ministry, a nonprofit that helps place men and women in housing when they leave prison. Hough qualifies for a subsidized apartment because he's a veteran.
Hough wasn't in the Army long. He was discharged after an arrest for theft. It wasn't his first time being on the wrong side of the law. He remembers shoplifting when he was 10 years old while growing up in Plano, Illinois.
"Every time I faced a Y in the road, I chose the bad route," Hough told me.
He has a long rap sheet, though at 69, he's less ashamed than some folks might be. He pulled two sheets of paper out of a folder he brought with him for our meeting, showing me all his arrests over the years -- theft, fraud, robbery and even arson. A few years here and there in jail or prison, adding up to 32 years, nearly half his life.
Hough was disappointed when I told him that the Starbucks where he used to hang out, on Wydown Boulevard and Hanley Road, had shut down. The last time he was there was shortly before he got arrested in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after a three-state spree of bank robberies. That spree, which started on Dec. 14, 2007, in Illinois and ended a couple of months later in New Mexico, came after a successful part of Hough's life.
He had been released from federal prison in 1999 and got a job in St. Louis at a paint factory. Working overtime one day, he met a man who owned a construction company. The man offered Hough a job and, before he knew it, he was supervising projects. Hough eventually started his own company, Kirk's Construction, and started doing well. He met a woman and they bought a house together in Clayton.
Then the housing crisis hit. Hough was sued over some construction business dealings. He maxed out his credit cards paying for attorneys. He lost the lawsuit. His girlfriend left him. He faced one of those forks in the road. He went the wrong way. Between federal and St. Louis County charges on the bank robberies, he was sent away for 16 years.
In 2016, while in prison in Missouri, Hough read a story in the Post-Dispatch about the Missouri Inmate Reincarceration Act. That's the "pay-to-stay" law that allows the Missouri attorney general to seize assets from inmates and use a portion to pay for the costs of incarceration.
Many of the cases involve people who are living in poverty -- having been represented by public defenders in their criminal cases -- but end up receiving a small windfall when a parent dies or some other event occurs. Some cases involve inmates who win legal settlements after receiving inadequate health care in jail or being abused by corrections officers. In some of those cases, Missouri courts have allowed attorneys general to seize that money, too.
As Hough read the story, written by my former colleague, Jennifer Mann, he noticed that a Kansas City attorney named Michael Shipley had some success helping inmates shield assets from the state. Hough's mother was in her 80s and he feared she might die soon. He wrote to Shipley and asked him for advice, in case he received an inheritance. Don't allow any money to be deposited in your prison account, Hough was told.
It's advice that folks who have spent time in the prison system pass around to friends.
"It's a hiding game," Hough says. "You can't let the state of Missouri know that you have anything or they will try to take it."
Attorneys like Shipley, and some prison inmates representing themselves in court, have chipped away at the law over the years, limiting its reach. Clayton attorney Bevis Schock is now trying to get the entire law declared unconstitutional.
That's why Hough and I were meeting for coffee. He read my recent column about a pregnant Missouri prisoner named Tonya Honkomp. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is trying to seize about $19,000 that Honkomp received from the sale of her house. The check from the title company was deposited in her prison account after she was already locked up. It's money she planned to use for reentry into society, to help take care of her baby after she gets out of prison.
Hough is going through that process right now. Even after being in and out of prison so many times, this time is the toughest, he says. He's been out since June 11.
"After 16 years, it's way harder," he told me.
Hough had a job interview on the morning we met. He has a meeting scheduled in August to start receiving Social Security and Medicare. Missouri doesn't do a lot to help men and women leaving prison to get resettled, he said. That's one reason why so many people leaving prison, including veterans, end up homeless.
But one of these days, Hough will have a check for about $20,000 to help him build the next phase of life. That's his share of his childhood home, sold after his mom died in 2020. Following Shipley's advice, Hough long ago asked his sister to put the money in a trust so the state couldn't seize it.
Soon, he hopes to buy a car to help him get around town. He wants to put some money away for when he moves out of the subsidized apartment. His bank-robbing days, he says, are over.
"When you see guys dying in prison ...," Hough said, before his voice trailed off.
"I don't want to be one of those guys. I'm done."
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