For years, Platte County sheriff Mark Owen has said the clock was ticking for the current Platte County Detention Center in Platte City.
The facility’s time came up this year, with the release of a statement from the Platte County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday, April 12. Due to overcrowding problems the sheriff was forced to move inmates to other facilities.
The current facility was built in 1998 with about 150 beds. Over the years, about 30 more beds were added, but opportunities for real expansion were few.
“When the population in the detention center is between 220-230 inmates it pushes our staff and facility resources too far,” Owen said in the release. “We cannot safely keep this many inmates at a time in our jail.”
Owen met with prosecutor Eric Zahnd, district commissioner Joe Vanover and others last month to address the imminent overcrowding problems and discussed short-term and mid-term solutions.
In mid-March, the Sheriff’s Office began transferring inmates to the Clay County Detention Center. Additional inmates were moved to the Buchanan County Jail on Saturday, April 2.
Currently, 14 inmates are being kept in other jails.
“In many of our cells, we have inmates sleeping on the floor in temporary beds,” Owen said. “Trying to keep too many people in the jail will lead to more disciplinary problems.”
In recent years, reports of use of force to control inmates at the detention center have increased. In December 2021, a full-scale riot forced the sheriff’s office to call in outside assistance from Clay County. Platte and Clay County SWAT teams entered the jail with rifles firing “pepper balls” on Monday, Dec. 20 to break up a riot involving 25 inmates in one cell block and several in another.
The jail facility was damaged during the riot and more than a dozen of those inmates are now facing additional charges.
The aging facility also faces other challenges. Late last year an original dryer in the jail’s laundry room caught on fire. Routine maintenance is often difficult to perform as inmates need to be removed from an area before work can be done.
Serious discussions about the need to expand the jail facility kicked off around 2012 with a report by Captain Randy Pittman. In 2014, then-commissioners contracted Goldberg Group Architects to assess needs and come up with options – which included a $21 million 315-bed facility.
After the report of a commission-appointed study group – which included current district commissioner Dagmar Wood - concerns over the population projection data used by Goldberg and the price tag shelved the project for a few years.
In 2018, the commission hired consultant Bill Garnos, who reviewed the past jail studies and projected future needs. Late that year, he delivered a report stating the county could need to double its bed capacity over the next 20 years, to hold 376 inmates by 2038.
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, jail populations dropped, in part due to mitigation efforts to keep low-level offenders out of the facility. Now, the in-custody population is again spiking.
Owen and Zahnd met with presiding judge Thomas Fincham and the county commissioners early this week to discuss options.
“Moving our inmates to other jails is only a short-term solution,” Owen said. “This problem will likely get worse as we come into summer when we traditionally have more inmates.”
The Sheriff’s Office has agreements with other area detention centers to house inmates. In the past the agreements have been used rarely in special situations. This is the first time inmates have been moved to other counties to reduce the inmate population.