Mission Statement
The Public Safety Division is involved in a wide range of criminal prosecutions at the trial level. The division’s special prosecution unit prosecutes or assists in the prosecution of cases throughout Missouri, many of them homicide cases. In 2009, division attorneys had more than 440 active special prosecutions in 83 of Missouri's 114 counties and the City of St. Louis.
The methamphetamine prosecution unit specializes in handling criminal cases involving the manufacture, sale or possession of methamphetamine. The workers’ compensation fraud unit prosecutes fraud or misconduct involving workers’ compensation, and the Medicaid fraud control unit prosecutes cases involving fraud of the state Medicaid program by health professionals, and prosecutes abuse or neglect of Medicaid recipients by caregivers.
The division’s high technology and computer crime unit assists local law enforcement with investigations and prosecutions of computer and Internet crime cases. The sexually violent predator unit seeks the civil commitment of sexual predators who suffer from a mental abnormality making them more likely than not to commit additional predatory acts of sexual violence.
Attorneys in the division also serve as legal counsel for the Department of Public Safety, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Missouri State Water Patrol and other state law enforcement agencies, and represent those agencies in all civil litigation to which they are a party. Division attorneys also defend the state in all habeas corpus actions filed by prison inmates in state and federal courts. Each year they litigate some 500 federal habeas corpus actions in the federal district courts, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court.