Kansas Citians voted for a new jail. Now we must act to address detainee safety | Opinion

Kansas City desperately needs a new municipal jail. Voters here understood this and answered the call in Tuesday’s election by approving a public safety sales tax extension that will pay for a new 250-bed rehabilitation and detention center, and other public safety capital improvements.

As we await the years of construction before the facility is ready for detainees, we all agree that sending them to other county jails amid questionable treatment and horrendous conditions is no longer tenable — nor should it be.

Also, Kansas Citians who run afoul of city code or break the law still deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. City leaders promise the public safety tax will offer, along with a jail, a comprehensive approach to address the mental health and substance abuse challenges many of our most vulnerable neighbors must deal with on a daily basis. We expect them to keep this promise.

As with any new development of this magnitude, we must all ask ourselves: What’s next?

Public safety in real time

We call on the City Council, Mayor Quinton Lucas and whoever is chosen as the next city manager to collaborate with Kansas City community organizations and leaders to redefine what public safety looks like here.

And we must address the current lack of jail space in Kansas City in real time. Yes, the City Council allocated $16 million to construct a 55-bed facility inside Kansas City police headquarters — a direct action stemming from concerns about rampant crime on Kansas City’s East Side and other parts of the city.

But who knows how long that will take?

It is imperative that our elected officials act now. This current setup that sends detainees to rural counties far away from their families and much-needed resources does little to improve public safety here.

Serious allegations of abuse and racially-motivated mistreatment of Black male Kansas Citians in the Vernon County Jail, specifically, should concern us all.

Another question to consider: How does Kansas City move forward with the construction of a new jail and still adhere to the concerns raised by community organizers and civic and civil rights leaders who were dead set against it with concerns of mass incarceration, overpolicing and a lack of resources that get to the root of crime prevention?

These credible accusations from Black community leaders are not lost on this board.

Despite the yes vote on the sales tax extension, we encourage these leaders to continue working with city officials on how to best address public safety needs locally.

A small price to pay

The proposed jail will be built next to the new Jackson County Detention Center under construction along U.S. Highway 40 and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars just for construction — but we still don’t know how much we will spend to operate and staff a new jail.

Whatever the amount, it is a small price to pay to correct a long overdue wrong — the city last operated its own jail decades ago, and six years have passed since its agreement to share space with Jackson County ended in 2019. Since, we have tried but failed miserably to properly house municipal detainees.

We cannot arrest our way out of crime and mayhem but we can — and we must — work together to address the root causes of what leads to crime. Among those concerns are:

• Adequate employment and housing opportunities.
• Access to quality education.
• Access to mental health resources and preventive health procedures and screenings.
• Other socioeconomic issues that factor into a recurring life of crime.

The construction of a new municipal jail in Kansas City is a much-needed, long-term solution to solve just a small fraction of society’s ills.

But the City Council must act now to keep our detainees free from the kind of abuse and neglect they’ve been subjected to in rural jails outside of our county.