JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Since I’m having a spot of trouble convincing people to get on board my No. 1 crusade — getting a first-class airport for a first-class city — I think I’m going to start another one.

How about this: A first-class jail for a first-class county?

I’ve never seen the confinement areas of the Jackson County Detention Center, so I don’t know first-hand how serious the problems are at the jail. But from what I’ve been reading, it sounds bad.

The Star on Saturday published on its website an in-depth story by Mike Hendricks about the chronic problems at the nine-story facility at 13th and Cherry. (I expect that story to lead Sunday’s print edition.)

At the top of the story, setting the scene, Hendricks says:

Inmates and their families complain of crowding, broken plumbing, grime and fear of spending even a short amount of time within a facility where there is no assurance of safety. Assaults occur in areas where guards and cameras can’t see. The baddest of the bad have sometimes roamed freely to commit sexual assaults and beatings in the middle of the night.

During the past year, the county spent about $3 million on jail improvements, including replacing several hundred cell doors — doors that would no longer lock!

Now, it would be hard enough spending time in that, or any, jail but to be in a cell where the door doesn’t lock and “the baddest of the bad” are roaming around in the night….??? Holy crap.

Jackson County Detention Center

It’s estimated that a new jail would cost $200 million to $300 million. The recommendation is that, if the county should try to move ahead with a new, larger jail, it should be a single-level facility that allowed more direct supervision of inmates. A jail architect said modern jails also “are filled with natural light and incorporate color and softer, sound-absorbing materials like wood and carpet.”

And, no, I’m not talking about a Taj Mahal, just a place that’s tolerable. The vast majority of inmates at the detention center are just passing through — either awaiting trial or transfer to another facility. But they are often there for months, and they don’t deserve to be living in miserable conditions.

When I read that a new jail should be a single-level facility — which makes sense and is the style of most relatively new state and federal prisons — it struck me that if a facility like that was going to be built downtown, it would take up at least a full city block, maybe more.

I noted that in an email to Hendricks, and he responded that a new jail “most likely would not be downtown.” And that, he said would present another problem — how family members of inmates would get to and from a more removed jail on public transportation.

But that’s a problem for another day. The immediate problem is what to do about a badly deteriorated facility that opened in 1984 and was overcrowded from almost Day One.

**

When I came to Kansas City in 1969, the jail was on the top five floors of the Jackson County Courthouse. I covered the courthouse for the newspaper from 1971 to 1978 and saw that jail many times. My most vivid memory from it was following along as a prisoner who had been arraigned on a murder charge was hauled up to the 11th floor, all the while screaming, “I didn’t do it! You’ve got the wrong person! I’m innocent.” Those shrieks sounded like they came from the soul of an innocent man, and they shook me up. Sure enough, the next day the charge was dropped and he was released.

Here’s how Hendricks described that facility…

“That old jail was cold in the winter and broiling in the summer because, unlike the rest of the courthouse, it wasn’t air conditioned. And as it became increasingly crowded in the 1960s, with 500 inmates living in a space meant for 300, that jail became more broken down, filthy and beset by violence.”

History is now repeating itself. The jail that opened 33 years ago is broken down and beset by violence.

So now I ask you, if you can’t or won’t join me in Crusade No. 1, get on board Crusade No. 2.

I want to see a jail where the cell doors lock, the plumbing works and where the inmates live in humane conditions. Sure, there are some bad hombres in that jail, but the majority should not have to live, day after day, night after night, in a hell hole where the toilets don’t flush and “the baddest of the bad” go around buggering fellow inmates.