'More police doesn't prevent crime': Mayor of America's most murderous city vows to shut notorious prison and defund the police

St Louis, Missouri, holds the unenviable record of the highest murder rate in America, ahead of Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit for the sixth year running.

But despite 262 killings in 2020 - more than twice as many as London in a city with the population of Brighton - residents have just voted in a new mayor promising to defund the police and close the city’s most notorious prison.

Tishaura Jones, a Harvard-educated single mother, who once filed for bankruptcy and whose father spent time in jail, is part of a growing progressive wing of the Democratic party making gains under US president Joe Biden.

The city’s first black female mayor told The Telegraph: “St Louis needs a lot of help,” and has targeted the police.

“We still have two separate police unions - one for black police officers and one for white officers.

“If they can’t trust each other, then how can they expect the public to trust them?”

Questions have been asked, therefore, as to why she wants to cut $4 million from the $171 million policing budget and shut down one of the city's two prisons.

“More police doesn't prevent crime,” says the 49-year-old, speaking from her grand, wood-paneled office in Downtown, near the baseball stadium and train station, just a short walk from the Mississippi river.

“Research done in the police department shows that 50 per cent of calls can be answered by someone other than police.

“So, why not deploy someone other than police, and free up police to do the work that they were trained to do in our academy.”

The controversial jail, known as "the workhouse" is "an uninhabitable institution that should have been closed years ago," Ms Jones says.

Its closure would save the city $7 million a year. The 600 inmates, who are mostly there awaiting trial, will be sent to other facilities in the wider area.

The money, she says, should be spent on mental health emergency workers and social services.

The situation is being replicated across America.

More than 20 major cities have reduced their police budgets in some form and reallocated the money elsewhere, such as in Austin, Texas, where it is being put into housing programs.

An Elizabeth Warren, then Bernie Sanders supporter, Ms Jones is fast becoming a national figure, appearing on CNN and catching the attention of Fox News.

But it has not been an easy rise.

Her father spent a year in jail for fraud in 1995. In 1999 she filed for bankruptcy after a failed restaurant business venture. In 2000, her mother Laura died from cancer. Last year, Ms Jones underwent treatment for uterine fibroids - non-cancerous tumours in her uterus.

“I would say that those experiences make me more relatable to the people that are represented.

“The challenges that I faced are the challenges that a lot of my constituents have faced in their lives as well, so bringing all of that to the table as mayor guides my policy making.”