That lawsuit is pending.

“I say all the time that the workhouse is a hopeless place. When you first walk in, you can feel the hopelessness,” said Inez Bordeaux, who once spent 30 days in the workhouse awaiting a probation violation hearing. “You can feel the desperation.”

But the city’s jail population, including both the workhouse and the Justice Center downtown, is shrinking. It dropped 12 percent in the last year, said Koran Addo, a spokesman for Krewson.

“We are committed to reducing the population in our city’s jails in safe and responsible ways,” Addo said. “We are continually looking for ways to keep the facilities at MSI up to date.”

Krewson also has convened meetings with judges, the circuit attorney’s office and corrections officials to urge them to explore new bail policies and flexibility for certain inmates, such as those only in jail for technical probation violations.

While some in the workhouse are held on high bails because of criminal records or potential flight risk, critics of the jail say most are simply unable to afford even modest bail — and the city’s poor, black residents are usually the ones disproportionately stuck in the troubled facility for months on end.