Jackson County Detention Center

Up To Date spoke with Jackson County Executive Frank White and Legislators Jalen Anderson and Jeanie Lauer about their commitment to reintroduce an ordinance that would ban anti-gay "conversion therapy" on minors.

Rejecting a consultant’s recommendation that would save money and delays, Jackson County officials said Tuesday the county is open to sharing space and services at the site of the new detention center already being built on the city’s eastside.

Mayor Quinton Lucas says the county cited costs in turning away a proposal to add a municipal jail to the $256.5 million Jackson County Detention Center. Now the city and county are spending “half a billion dollars on two jails potentially across the street from each other,” Lucas said.

Sheriff Darryl Forté has pointed to a nonexistent provision in Missouri's new voting law to limit voter registration efforts inside the Jackson County jail, where hundreds of detainees are potentially eligible voters. Missouri's voter registration deadline is Oct. 12.

The cases concerned a 2019 policy that required women to remove their underwire bras when entering the Jackson County Detention Center.

Legislators had been concerned with what they said was a lack of transparency about the new detention center.

Residents of Heart Mobile Village were required to relocate by February so the county could move forward with a new detention center. While Jackson County allocated about $2.5 million to help residents relocate, some say officials haven't lived up to their promises.

Operation Liberation held a rally outside the Jackson County Detention Center on Monday, claiming that widespread "precautionary quarantines" are denying inmates their due process rights. Detention center officials deny the accusations.

More than 100 residents of Heart Village mobile park will be displaced as part of the county's plan to build a new detention center.

The deal to build a new detention center at the site of the Heart Village mobile park will displace families in a region already plagued by a shortage of affordable housing.

This is the first step in replacing the current Jackson County Detention Center which has been overcrowded since it opened in downtown Kansas City in 1984.

Jackson County voters overwhelmingly chose Darryl Forté in the Democratic primary.