Boone County spent an extra $200,000 to house detainees out of county in 2022
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Boone County received close to an additional $200,000 to house detainees in neighboring county jails to prevent overcrowding.
In 2022, the Boone County Jail budgeted $300,000 to house detainees in jails outside of Boone County. The County requested an additional $199,814 from the Boone County Commission.
Boone County Sheriff's Office spokesman Capt. Brian Leer said the Sheriff's Office requested the additional money from the Boone County Auditor's Office.
In 2021, Leer said the jail spent $764,000 in out-of-county housing. Leer added the increase was in part due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Leer said they transport detainees to neighboring county jails to prevent overcrowding at the Boone County Jail. Boone County has contracts with the Callaway County Jail, Cooper County Jail and Montgomery County Jail.
"We don't want to run at 100% capacity," Leer said. "So, we try to maintain about 85% capacity for what we can actually house in the jail."
Leer said Boone County can house up to 212 detainees. However, to prevent overcrowding, there are currently 176 detainees at the jail. Thirty-six detainees the County is responsible for are being housed outside of Boone. Leer said the majority of detainees are facing felony charges.
Each detainee costs roughly $50 a day to house outside of Boone County. Leer said in the County is responsible for the cost, transportation and housing for each inmate.
"It's very much for safety purposes," Leer said. "We have to maintain bed because we never know who's going to be arrested in 10 minutes or an hour from now, and so we have to maintain some vacancy."
Leer said the number of inmates housed in Boone can fluctuate due to rivalries, detainees suffering from mental health issues, COVID-19-positive detainees and more.
"We have a large number of people that we see come through the jail that are suffering from various types of mental illness," Leer said. "Some of those people, many of them have to be housed by themselves."
Detainees who do need to be separated from other inmates take up an extra bed. These varying factors lead to fluctuating inmate counts in Boone County, and outside of the County. The jail currently has 40 detainees that have a segregated status.
Leer said they are seeing an increase in detainees due in part to the population growth in the County.
"So the population continues to increase, and I think we can all agree that crime hasn't been decreasing," he said. "We've experienced a large explosion of the population here in the Boone County/Columbia area since 1992. However, we're still operating with the same size facility for Boone County Jail."
Leer said at some point, Boone County will have to decide if, "it's more beneficial to keep housing out of the county, or is it going to be more beneficial to look at other alternatives within the county as far as another facility or an addition to the facility."
"Our primary focus is safety and security," Leer said. "So the safety of the detainees and the security of the facility, and to keep people who society has deemed needs to be held in a secure facility and the Boone County Jail, that they're held safely and securely."
