Two questions on the Tuesday, Aug. 6 election ballot address the future of the overcrowded and aging Platte County Detention Center.
The county has an informational website at co.platte.mo.us/jail with more details about the proposal. Both questions are published on the sample ballot on Page 3 of this issue. Question one would issue up to $85 million in bonds for construction and renovations, funded by a one-half cent sales tax to be collected for 20 years outlined in Question two.
Commissioners voiced their support for the new jail expansion plan in May, presenting a new master plan to outline the history of the jail and its possible future.
Since, some have criticized the ballot measures, including County Treasurer Rob Willard, who said he would not support the proposal, and, to a lesser extent, Auditor Kevin Robinson, who said he found some flaws in the calculations used to achieve the final numbers.
The Platte County Commission, Prosecutor Eric Zahnd and Sheriff Mark Owen have all spoken out in support of the plan, with the Citizen publishing their guest contributions and letters to the editor.
In the 1970s the historic courthouse building was expanded to the north of the courthouse to house prisoners and in 1998 a new sheriff’s office and detention center designed to house 151 inmates was opened. In 2018, the detention center was renovated to house 174 inmates. The 1990s structure was designed to serve the county’s needs for 20 years, and constructed to house 151 inmates in seven housing pods. By 2022, the average daily population was 214 inmates. The current jail also has limited ability to house inmates being held for municipal violations.
In 1990, when the current jail was in the planning phases, the county’s population was 57,867. The 2020 population is 104,959 and by 2050 the Mid-America Regional Council predicts Platte County’s population will grow to more than 146,000.
With that population growth comes the need for more jail space to hold offenders, officials say.
The county has spent the past decade attempting to address the jail problem, starting with studies done in 2014 and the first citizen jail committee. Another committee was formed last year, and recommended construction of a multi-story addition housing an additional 312 new beds, to create a facility housing 471 beds in at least 13 pods built in the same general arrangement as the current jail. Expansion of service areas, including the kitchen, laundry, holding areas and attorney-client meeting rooms would also be included.
Late last year, commissioners selected HMN Architects to design the new facility.
HMN representatives presented an overview of the plan, which would be constructed on-site and would meet county needs until 2048. It features the ability to separate violent and non-violent inmates, expands the medical and mental health division, relocates prisoner intake into a new lower level and transforms the “Futures” area – the basement of the current jail – into trustee facilities and additional support service space, such as kitchen and laundry.
The cells would be in prefabricated units with the shell of the jail built on site and the prebuilt pods lifted into place. The prefabricated cells would allow HVAC and plumbing to be located in an outer hallway, eliminating the safety concerns for maintenance workers in the jail.
Platte County Sheriff Mark Owen has pointed out that the current jail poses safety issues for both sheriff’s office staff and general county building maintenance staff. He listed the crimes for which current inmates are incarcerated which range from assaults and larcenies to homicides and sexual crimes involving children.
Owen said he was on the committee that built the old jail and at the time it was meant to last 20-25 years.
“There is no more room – we’re out of room,” Owen said. “At one point we hit 240 inmates and this jail was not designed for 240 inmates.”
Due to federally-mandated separation requirements, different classifications of inmates need to be separated in different ways. There is no longer room to separate people as needed.
The jail was well built when it was done, Owen said, but it’s slowly decaying and people are capable of breaking or peeling parts of the jail away and make weapons. Owen showed commissioners a bolt that had been sharpened on concrete to a razor point, stating that the makeshift weapon is capable of penetrating the officers’ protective vests.
The renovation of the existing jail and the modern design of the new jail space would eliminate a lot of these concerns.