Kansas City’s permanent jail will not open for a few years. But the city will soon build a temporary jail and booking facility to detain people while it designs and constructs its permanent facility near Blue Valley Park.
A resolution to study the feasibility of building the jail passed with a vote of 8-0 at a city council meeting on Thursday. It was sponsored by council members Wes Rogers, Lindsay French, Melissa Patterson Hazley and Crispin Rea.
City Manager Mario Vasquez will now study how much the temporary jail will cost the city, recommend locations for the facility and determine a timeline for construction.
A temporary jail would likely not be able to be built at the site where the city’s permanent jail will be located because of ongoing construction for the neighboring Jackson County jail.
Other city-owned property, prioritizing industrial areas with few restrictions, is on the table. The city’s tow lot in the Northeast and a spot in the East Village close to City Hall were both mentioned at a committee meeting on Tuesday.
The jail would be constructed using prefabricated, modular buildings that look like trailers, which could likely be done within three months after the plan is presented to city council and approved.
At a committee meeting Tuesday, Rogers said “we have a serious crime problem” that needs to be addressed before the city can build the necessary facilities.
“The public safety sales tax passed, which is great,” Rogers said. “We'll be able to build a detention facility. We've got the state mental health facility that's going to be built; we're increasing low-barrier shelter beds. But the reality is, all that will take several years to get done, and we need a solution now.”
Kansas City hasn’t overseen its own jail since 2009. It currently sends people charged with municipal violations to other Missouri jails over an hour away in Vernon and Johnson counties.
Part of the reason the city wants to build the temporary jail now is because of the upcoming World Cup games. The city expects the surge of visitors to put a strain on its detention needs. On KCUR’s Up to Date earlier this week, Vasquez said the city doesn’t have experience with that many visitors coming in at one time.
“We probably need to be prepared to handle some of the unfortunate things that may happen during the event,” Vasquez. “So we were talking about potentially accelerating any kind of a detention type facility to address any criminal violations or misbehavior from visitors.”
At a committee meeting Tuesday about the ordinance, council member Johnathan Duncan spoke out against the plan. He said it targets unhoused people and those struggling with addiction, who represent many of the people detained on municipal code violations. He suggested a better solution would be to provide social services instead of incarcerating them.
“To simply put a Band-Aid, which is what I would think this is, and not provide those services, would be a disservice,” Duncan said. “In my view, the money would be much better used for temporary housing, temporary shelter with wraparound services.”
The new temporary jail will likely stop efforts to renovate and reopen a detention facility in the Kansas City Police Department headquarters downtown. The city could instead use the $14 million yet to be spent for that project to construct the temporary jail.
It could also fund the jail using money from the public safety sales tax funds after 2027 — but there are many competing uses for that money. The city also needs to hire more staff, including correctional officers, to run the jail.
