JEFFERSON CITY • A Missouri Department of Corrections employee has won a $600,000 settlement from the state after she alleged male co-workers at two state prisons regularly harassed her.

The taxpayer-funded payout, approved in January, included $297,607 to prison caseworker Jennifer LaFleur and more than $303,000 to attorneys who worked on her case, which was filed in Jackson County in 2017.

The settlement, announced in a monthly report Monday by Attorney General Eric Schmitt, is the latest involving female state workers within the prison system and elsewhere in state government that have cost millions of dollars that could have gone to other state programs.

The lawsuit, first reported by the Kansas City Star, said LaFleur was harassed while working at the Western Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in St. Joseph and the Kansas City Re-Entry Center.