Boone County Commission will consider budget increase to house inmates in other jails
STURGEON, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Boone County Commission met Thursday afternoon to consider a budget amendment to increase funding to cover the cost of out-of-county detainee housing.
Boone County Sheriff Dwayne Carey proposed a $1.9 million increase in funding; this money would only be used to pay the rest of the 2026 costs for out-of-county detainees.
"We don't have any more money. And so that's why we've asked for this 1.9 to be added, taken basically out of general revenue into our 12-55 account, which is our jail account, to then pay for the remainder of the year," Carey said. "And hopefully it's going to be enough."
Several Boone County Jail inmates over the years have had to be sent to other county jails due to limited space So far in 2026, the cost of sending detainees from Boone County Jail to other counties is $3.3 million, according to a press release. The projected cost for all of 2026 is $4.5 million.
Carey said the overcrowding comes from a variety of issues such as legislative changes, size of the jails and the increase in officers in Columbia.
"We often will correlate the increase in the Columbia police officers hiring 24 in the fall of '24 into '25, it definitely showed an increase in the number of bookings, we went up 600," Carey said. "If they're going to hire the 16 that they have open and another 50, it's really going to send us into a bad situation with the number of detainees that we're having to hold."
Proposition 1 was passed in August and added to Columbia's sales tax to give local public safety officials more funding. Carey said that with the increase in funding and the ability to add more officers, the Boone County jail is expecting a spike in detainee numbers.
Boone County has consistently moved more detainees to out-of-county jails than to the Boone County Jail and that number has increased dramatically in recent years.
This amendment to the Boone County Jail budget comes before the November election were Proposition L will be on the ballot. Prop L, if approved by voters, will add 3/8 to Boone County sales tax and the money will be used to build a new Boone County Jail.
Carey said the new jail would have 570 beds for detainees, and hopes that they will limit the number of out-of-county housing they must pay for. The design of the new jail will have three phases to accommodate for the increase in inmates.
"We'll design it the way that it should be designed for the population that we have currently. But we also put in what we call our transport hallways where we move detainees," Carey said. So if we have to get to phase two, which will set money aside for, during the first 15 years."
The new jail will have room to build off of and make different sections having the potential for more than 1,000 beds, said Carey. He said Phase 2 would not happen for decades down the road.
The No New Jail group is a Boone County group opposing Proposition L, and John Amick, a member of the group claims there has been little input from the public for a new jail.
"We would love for there to be a robust public engagement process where everyone has opportunities to voice what they would like to see in Boone County, there's not much of a choice here," Amick said. "There's to be taxed for hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 15 years, at least, for a new mega jail or nothing, that's the choice we have."
Amick said that opening up a larger jail facility could have lasting negative impacts on community members across Boone County.
"They want to get up to a thousand and they already have plans to lock up the future," Amick said. "That's pretty ominous for large swaths of people in Boone County."
The cost to send detainees out of county in 2022 was $499,000. That number jumped to over $2.56 million in 2025, including a $1.6 million jump from 2024 to 2025.
The cost to house a single inmate in another county jail is $50-$60 a day.
The Boone County request for budget amendment document stated how much they are paying to house detanees since February of 2026:
- Callaway County: $39,9000
- Phelps County: $97,045
- Greene County: $25,000
- Macon County: $52,380
- Randolph County: $24,180
- Warren County: $21,505
- Henry County: $5,460
The Commission said they would take the increase budget into consideration and meet to reconvene on Oct. 29.
