Kansas City councilwoman says delay on new jail could mean ‘spending way too much money’
Kansas City Councilwoman Melissa Patterson Hazley said Monday that someone should be held accountable for the city’s failure to work out an agreement with Jackson County for a shared jail campus on the city’s East Side.
More than three years after those discussions began, the county is ready to start building on the site. Yet the city still hasn’t decided whether to build a jail next to the $301 million county detention center, add beds to it or go it alone at some other location.
Patterson Hazley issued her criticism at a joint meeting of the city council and Jackson County legislature Monday after learning that the city has three weeks to decide.
Construction costs are only locked in until then, after which they will go up.
“What’s really disappointing for me is that we seem to have been in this conversation and could potentially be either missing an opportunity, or spending way too much money, when that didn’t have to be the case,” she said.
“I really don’t know what the root cause of that is. But we’ve had three years worth of planning. We’ve had the time, and we didn’t get it done. And so that needs to be said out loud, and somebody should be held accountable for that. Not sure who, but that’s a big problem. We shouldn’t be operating like this, in my opinion, Mr. Mayor.”
Contacted later, Patterson Hazley declined to expand on her remarks or say who she thought was responsible.
But Mayor Quinton Lucas took the hint as someone, he said, who was on the council when Sheriff Daryl Forté set in motion the city’s search for a place to house inmates jailed on municipal charges.
“I’ll take responsibility for prior council, mayor, myself, others in not getting us to the point we wish to be. But I am glad that at least we’re moving in this direction now,” he said.
Patterson Hazley is one of seven new members on the 13-member council. First-termers Johnathan Duncan and Crispin Rea also expressed disappointment during the meeting that they must make quick decisions on an issue that has been festering for years. Serious negotiations only began in May after years of fits and starts.
The city closed its own jail near the Truman Sports Complex in 2009. For the next decade, city inmates were housed at the county’s Regional Correctional Center, which is the art deco building that adjoins the red-brick Jackson County Detention Center in downtown Kansas City.
The city paid the county a fee for each detainee it houses. But that agreement ended in 2019, due to security concerns and financial issues. Since then, city inmates have been transported to jails in Warrensburg and Nevada, Missouri.
Building its own jail or partnering with Jackson County could cost between $100 million and more than $200 million, depending on which direction the council decides to go, City Manager Brian Platt said Monday.
Having city and county inmates in the same building is not a realistic option because county inmates are awaiting trial on felonies, whereas city inmates are held on misdemeanors.
In 2017, two women held on city charges were raped in their cells at the Regional Correctional Facility by an inmate awaiting trial for murder after he got keys to the area where they were held. Those assaults were among the reasons the county legislature began planning for a new jail.
