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Kansas City officials want to reconstitute the jail on the top floor of KCPD headquarters. The city closed the jail in 2015, and — after an agreement with Jackson County fell through — now sends detainees to mid-Missouri.
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Kansas City Council members are working on details to fund the construction of a new jail. Next spring, voters could be asked whether to renew the public safety sales tax in order to build an estimated 250-bed rehabilitation and detention center.
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The Douglas County Sheriff's Office is working with local mental health providers to cut down the state’s notoriously long wait times to provide services to inmates declared incompetent to stand trial.
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The Missouri House advanced a bill that would prevent pregnant inmates in their third trimester from being restrained, except under extraordinary circumstances. The bill would also create certain health care requirements for pregnant inmates and reverse the prohibition on nonviolent drug offenders receiving SNAP benefits.
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Saint Louis University is running a prison education program that provides some Missouri inmates and prison staff with the opportunity to earn degrees. An inmate who hopes to return to Kansas City upon his release says the program gave him a new perspective on life.
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Missouri has 285 people waiting in jails to be transferred to state-run psychiatric hospitals, potentially for months, without having been found guilty of a crime. And that number has been going up over the last few months, despite new mitigation efforts.
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Marquis Wagner died two years ago after being handcuffed and placed in a restraining chair, according to a lawsuit filed in Jackson County Circuit Court. Guards allegedly ignored Wagner's pleas of "I can't breathe."
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Kansas City Council member Crispin Rea is the chair of a committee looking for community input on how to move forward with a new city jail. Engagement sessions will be held in the coming weeks so that residents can share their thoughts.
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A Kansas inmate says he didn't threaten officers in prison, but a disciplinary report saying he did might have cost him parole. It’s just one example of a prison disciplinary system that can be stacked against inmates when they try to fight a write up.
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The people imprisoned were supposed to receive rehabilitative mental health services that allow them to stand trial, but they have been found to languish in Missouri jails — often for months — without having been found guilty of any crime.
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Currently 253 people are in Missouri jails who haven't been convicted of a crime, still waiting to be transferred to a state hospital for mental health treatment. Those patients are supposed to receive rehabilitative mental health services that allow them to become competent to stand trial, but instead they're languishing behind bars — often in solitary confinement.
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As Kansas City explores constructing a new municipal jail, prison experts say the city has an opportunity to take a different approach to crime. Kansas City has long used its municipal jail for those who violate city codes, but the vast majority of inmates are nonviolent offenders.