By Kurt Erickson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The warden of a northwest Missouri prison for women has been named to a top post in the state’s embattled Department of Corrections.
In an announcement to agency staff, Corrections Director Anne Precythe said Alana Boyles will take over as the director of the Division of Adult Institutions on May 1.
She replaces former adult institutions chief Dave Dormire, who announced his retirement in February amid an agency-wide sexual harassment scandal that has cost Missouri taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees.
Boyles, who has been warden at the Chillicothe Correctional Center since 2014, will oversee the state’s 21 prisons. She started in the department as a prison caseworker in western Missouri and also was a deputy warden at the Maryville Treatment Center.
Chillicothe houses 1,640 female inmates and is home to a 256-bed substance abuse treatment program.
Dormire, who worked for the prison system for 42 years, was earning $92,000 when he retired. A salary for Boyles was not immediately available.
Boyles’ appointment is the latest change at the agency. Precythe was picked by Gov. Eric Greitens to oversee the department after serving in a top administrative position with the North Carolina prison system. She replaced former agency head George Lombardi.
Kenneth Jones has been elevated to be the chairman of the Board of Parole and Probation after five years on the panel. Jones, a Republican from Clarksburg, replaces Ellis McSwain, a Democrat from Jefferson City who has served as chairman for the past seven years.
McSwain will continue as a member of the seven-member board, which rules on whether offenders should be released from prison.
Jones, a former sheriff and Republican state representative, is the father of Greitens’ deputy chief of staff, Caleb Jones.
In the central office, Precythe has filled the deputy director post vacated in December by David Rost with Matt Sturm, who will serve as the No. 2 person in the system. Sturm was director of the Division of Offender Rehabilitative Services and has been at the agency since 1996.
At the Kansas City Community Release Center, Precythe has replaced Warden Lilly Angelo with retired former Warden Sonny Collins. She also has moved two deputy wardens out of the facility and brought in retired wardens to replace them.
The facility was converted last year from a release center like the one in downtown St. Louis to a minimum-security institution that houses inmates who are about to be released but not yet on parole.
Precythe’s first months as director have been dominated by reports of widespread sexual harassment of female prison guards, which have resulted in millions of dollars in legal payouts by the state.
The scandal was first reported by the Pitch.com, a Kansas City newspaper, which found a pattern of harassment among male workers toward their female counterparts.
Attorney General Josh Hawley told a Senate panel in March that the state was challenging another $28 million in payouts, although not all of those are from the Department of Corrections.
The House has formed a special investigative committee that has been taking testimony about problems within the agency.