Boone County Sheriff Dwayne Carey has spent the fall making his case for a new jail. He’s given about two dozen presentations, including an Oct. 6 League of Women Voters forum at the Columbia Public Library, and has handed out his personal cellphone number so voters could call with questions.
His pitch comes down to one number: the jail was built to hold about 200 people. On Oct. 12, the county had 449 people in custody, the most in 35 years — and not all of them could fit under one roof.
On Nov. 3, voters across Boone County will decide on Proposition L, a three-eighths-cent sales tax that would pay for a new 570-bed jail. The tax would add to a one-eighth-cent law enforcement sales tax voters approved in 2002 and would expire Dec. 31, 2042 — about the same time as Prop L's additional levy would.
“We felt like we hit that tipping point,” Carey said.
A jail that keeps outgrowing itself
The county has expanded its jail before. A 48-bed addition opened in 1978, and the current jail was built in the early 1990s for about $6.8 million. A 1999 renovation raised its capacity to 210 beds.
Today, more than 200 Boone County detainees are held in 14 other Missouri counties, some more than three hours' drive away. Housing them cost the county $499,000 in 2022 and $2.55 million last year. It has spent more than $3.3 million so far this year, and Carey has asked the County Commission for another $1.9 million to cover costs through the end of the year. Those figures don’t include transportation or overtime. The county budgeted more than $800,000 this year for jail staff overtime pay.
Carey estimates Prop L would raise $15-$17 million per year, up to $255 million over 15 years. About $90-$100 million of that would go to building the jail. The rest would pay off a 10-year construction loan, cover operating costs and set aside money for future expansion. Carey hopes to break ground in spring 2028 and open the jail by 2030.
Who’s inside
Carey said nearly everyone in custody faces a felony charge. When he spoke with KBIA on Oct. 7, only 24 people were being held on misdemeanors.
A May snapshot of the jail roster, reported by the Missouri News Network, found the most common charge was armed criminal action, followed by third-degree domestic assault and drug possession. Of 390 people in custody, more than half — 199 — were Black. Only about 10% of Boone County's residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, are Black.
Marisa Omori, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, said disparities like that largely start with policing, the entry point to the system, and then compound.
“If Black people are more likely to be arrested, and then more likely to have a criminal record, then that shows up as a factor the next time,” Omori said. “It becomes this sort of self-reinforcing cycle.”
Omori, who hasn’t studied Boone County’s jail specifically, said when jails fill up, it’s often because of both more arrests and longer stays, with many people held before trial.
The mental health problem
Mental health is at the center of Carey’s pitch. He said 18 detainees are waiting for beds in state psychiatric hospitals, with nine more awaiting evaluations. As of February, 528 Missourians were waiting for court-ordered treatment, and the state’s mental health director told lawmakers the average wait for a hospital bed was about 14 months. Civil rights groups sued the Missouri Department of Mental Health over the backlog last year.
In the current jail, Carey said, a psychiatrist and a case manager share one 12-by-12 office, with no room for therapy. The new jail would add 50 single-person cells for those with mental illness, as well as more medical beds and a reentry building outside the jail, where people leaving custody could get mental health services.
“If I did not have one mental health detainee in my jail, I would be stoked, but that’s not the reality,” Carey said.
Omori said jails became major health care providers after states scaled back state-run mental health care in the 1970s and 80s. She said jails are pulled between providing care and saving space and money.
“Even if they have good intentions, it makes it hard, or difficult, to provide the best healthcare for people who are incarcerated,” she said.
More police, more arrests?
Prop L comes three months after Columbia voters approved Proposition 1, a 1% citywide sales tax for police and fire, by 84 votes. Starting Jan. 1, it’s expected to raise about $38 million a year and pay for 50 more police officers by 2031, along with 42 firefighters.
Carey supports adding more officers, but he says the jail has to hold those arrested. He said bookings rose by about 600 from fall 2024 to fall 2025, after Columbia police hired 24 additional officers.
“When you voted for the more police officers, you’ve gotta support the jail because we have to have some place in order to put those individuals,” Carey said.
Scott LaCombe, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri’s Truman School of Government and Public Affairs, said the link isn’t automatic.
“I don’t think more police automatically equals more prisoners, right? A lot of community-oriented policing actually decreases the incarceration rate,” LaCombe said.
But Omori said more officers frequently does mean more arrests. And she expects a bigger jail would fill up, too.
“Whatever capacity they’ll build, I have no doubt that they will fill it,” she said.
That's even as Columbia’s violent crime has fallen, from 652 offenses in 2021 to 470 in 2025, according to the Columbia Police Department’s annual report.
Who pays, and how much?
For a Columbia resident buying a $25,000 car, sales tax today comes to about $1,994. Prop 1 will add about $250 in January. Prop L would add about $94 more.
John Amick, a Boone County Community Bail Fund volunteer who opposes Prop L, said that cost lands hardest on the people who fill the jail. The bail fund mostly helps people whose bail is under $3,000.
“This is a double smack in the face to poor working-class folks, and, again, disproportionately Black folks in the county,” Amick said.
Amick’s group, No New Jail Boone County, says the county should consider other options before building.
But Carey argues taxpayers are paying either way.
“We’re paying for it one way or another, right? I mean, this is all taxpayers’ dollars,” he said.
LaCombe said the choice is whether to invest now or keep paying other counties, and there’s no clear right answer. It’s also an open question, he said, whether Columbia voters who just raised their sales tax will do it again.
“Voters just raise their sales taxes, are they willing to raise it again, right?” LaCombe said.
Rural Boone County voters didn’t get a vote on Prop 1. LaCombe said they may be torn between supporting law enforcement and opposing a tax increase. He said the burden is on supporters to make their case.
“Voters are predisposed to vote no on ballot measures unless you make the case why they should vote yes,” he said.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
