The Kansas City Star’s editorial board, in their endorsement of the $800 million mega-jail proposal, spoke with the polished condescension of people who claim proximity to power as wisdom. As part of my Propaganda Watch column, I felt compelled to respond.
After The Star met with a coalition of Black formerly incarcerated people, civil rights leaders, and community organizers (including myself)—those who have lived, breathed, and survived the brutal system of incarceration—they chose to describe dissension of the Jail Tax–also known as Question 1–as “passionate opposition.”
“Passionate,” as a euphemism for: “well meaning, but you don’t really understand.”
But to be clear: We do understand–deeply.
We are in the jails. We are in the courtrooms. We are with the mothers who bury their children after preventable deaths inside cages you call solutions. And we are also with the community-based programs—underfunded and overlooked—that prevent harm, address crises, and offer something the jail never will: a way out.
You Say Conditions in County Facilities Are Torturous—So Let’s Build…Another Jail?
The Star claims concern regarding the unconscionable practice of transporting Black men to Vernon County, where racist torture is routine. To this point, I agree.
But their proposed solution? Build another mass human cage—sleek, new, local.
This is nothing other than plantation logic.
If this were the era of chattel slavery, similar reformists would be arguing that enslaved people should be transferred to a different plantation because the last overseer was too cruel.
They’d be publishing op-eds about “improved slave-quarters” while keeping the whips cracking and the chains intact.
They’d sell readers on the idea of a more humane plantation, rather than asking: why does this exist at all?
That’s what this is. A new jail won’t end Vernon County’s violence, nor will it stop inhumane conditions of jails—it will simply replicate it in Kansas City as has already been the case in previous city-owned jail facilities.
A Claim Without Data Is Just Propaganda
The Star claims—without a single piece of data, evidence, or lived experience—that a new jail will somehow end the racialized violence faced by Black men that are currently incarcerated in Vernon County. “A yes vote does not end that untenable situation tomorrow, but it does end rather than extend it,” they say.
This is not only misleading, but it is morally wrong.
The vast majority of people currently locked up in Kansas City are Black. This has nothing to do with county jail conditions or contract problems; this has everything to do with a system hell-bent on sending Black people to jail at alarming rates without intending to provide them with the support that they need–not because the buildings are outdated, but because incarceration is inherently racialized violence.
Recent reporting shows that across Missouri jails, there is a crisis of inmates needing mental health treatment. Missouri had the highest prison death rate in its history last year. People are dying in jails and prisons across this state.
The Star offers no studies. Just vague assurances from the same public officials who have mismanaged every jail crisis in our city’s recent history.
That is no solution. That’s an empty promise with a nearly billion-dollar price tag.
This proposal offers no investment in community-based healing. No crisis response. No infrastructure for mental health care. No commitment to long-term alternatives.
Another Lie Exposed: Kansas City Would Have No Municipal Jail Space Without a New Mega-Jail
The Star claims— boldly and deceptively— “Kansas City does not have any jail now, or even a single local, operative cell to which a Kansas Citian in municipal custody can be sent.”
That statement is not only misleading—it’s also deceptive. It withholds the information that taxpayers just spent $16 million in 2024 to construct a new jail inside KCPD headquarters, a facility that can hold 144 people total, including 55 overnight detainees.
This KCPD HQ facility is not a future proposal. It passed. It is being built.
So why did The Star omit it? Why claim that Kansas City has “no jail” when a multi-million dollar detention center literally is being built inside police HQ, funded by public money? Not to mention this was the city’s arrangement for four years before contracting with the county.
A Billion Dollars for Death, Not Safety
This new jail will cost at least $250 million in immediate construction costs and $800 million over its lifetime. It’s expected to reach a near billion-dollar price tag over its lifetime—for a facility with no built-in mental health treatment, no re entry plan, no violence prevention, and no funding for existing community interventions.
If we were serious about improving public safety, that money would fund things like:
- The Lyrik Institution who works directly with impacted Black youth
- The REACH program’s pre-arrest diversion (which by the way, currently only receives $1.2 million).
- Ad Hoc’s decades-long violence interruption and mediation.
- Housing-first programs that actually reduce crime.
- Resources for the unhoused and food insecure.
The Star claims this facility will offer “better” mental health care than the current situation. But this is both inaccurate and misleading: again, the jail itself does not include any mental health plan. Last minute shuffling has revealed a supposed 25-bed contract in a psychiatric facility. There is no mention of it on the ballot–and to trust a city politician’s word for it is dangerous and misguided.
There is no rehabilitation funded by this sales tax nor is it guaranteed to exist. It’s truly a bait-and-switch strategy: use another plan–that was going to exist anyway–to further justify a very real jail. If mental health care were the goal, that $800 million would be going directly to community clinics, trauma care, and mobile response—not to steel bars and cell blocks.
So we know this, there is no integrated care plan. There is no staff. There is no funding structure. So what exactly is this “better” metric based on? Feelings and blind faith? And say even for a moment that such a “better” plan did exist—jail is still not health care. Jails dramatically exacerbate mental health conditions and drive people to violence and death.
How can anyone say with a straight face that they care about mental health—and then vote to build a jail? The facts are not vague. They are staggering.
People released from incarceration are up to 40 times more likely to die of overdose within two weeks of release. They are 18 times more likely to die by suicide.
Suicide is the leading cause of death in jails. And half of all suicides in jail happen in the first nine days. This means even short pretrial stays—before someone is convicted of anything—are deadly.
This is not speculation. It’s not a “what if.” It’s the documented, horrifying reality of incarceration.
The city’s own Alternatives to Incarceration Commission published that nearly 9 in 10 people incarcerated in Kansas City have had some form of interaction with University Health for either medical or mental health care. 90%.
This makes unmistakably clear that our jails are not places of last resort. They are the net cast wide to catch those already drowning in untreated mental illness, addiction, poverty, and trauma.
They Helped Build the System—Now They Pretend It Doesn’t Exist
This is the same corporate, pro-carceral media organization that for decades described Black people as “brutes” and “dangerous negroes”, quietly co-signed segregation, and tacitly celebrated the acquittal of the horrific monsters who murdered Emmet Till. This is not simply old news; this is a historical legacy of insistence to uphold a system that very evidently does not care about Black people no matter how much the world changes.
Their piece is filled with contradictions:
- They say the ballot language is “opaque but not deceptive”—as if those two things can be separated. But opaqueness is deception, especially when dealing with ballot measures (that have historically weaponized inaccessibility against Black and minoritized groups) that affect people’s lives. If the language is inaccessible to the public, it’s by design. And hiding the word jail from the very tax that would fund one is not prudence but political manipulation.
- They say diversion is essential—but want a cage as a condition of participation.
- They say we can’t arrest our way out of mental illness—then argue for a structure that exists to do just that.
The Star’s editorial board also tells us that “this isn’t mass incarceration.” They don’t define the term. They don’t cite a source. They don’t even pretend to offer data.
So let’s clarify it for them.
“Mass incarceration refers to the reality that the United States criminalizes and incarcerates more of its own people than any other country in the history of the world and inflicts that enormous harm primarily on the most vulnerable among us: poor people of color,” writes the nonprofit End Mass Incarceration.
They also offer this definition: “Mass incarceration is a network of policing, prosecution, incarceration, surveillance, debt, and social control that is rooted in, builds upon, and reproduces economic and racial inequality and oppression.”
By every single word of these definitions, this proposal contributes to the already existing legacy of mass incarceration in Kansas City.
An $800 million jail designed to warehouse poor, disproportionately Black people for municipal violations—run by the very departments that profit off of surveillance, debt, and control—is mass incarceration. The end.
And the fact that I even have to explain this? That I have to define a term which has been the subject of entire books, academic fields, grassroots movements, and global human rights reports? That’s the violence, too.
As Toni Morrison said, “The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”
The fact that the editorial board of the city’s most powerful newspaper—one that has justified slavery, segregation, and incarceration for over a century—has the gall to claim this isn’t mass incarceration tells us everything we need to know. Either they don’t know what mass incarceration is, or they do—and they’re defending it anyway.
Both are disqualifying.
A Smart, Practical, Bold Vision for Safety
We believe in public safety. That’s why we support housing, mental health care, youth programs, conflict resolution, job creation, and real crisis response.We believe in accountability. But a billion-dollar mega-jail is not public safety or accountability. It’s racialized institutional violence.
The same developers and profit-driven companies who built Vernon County’s hellhole are the same types who will build this one. The people incentivized to produce the horrifying conditions of Johnson County and Vernon County are the same types who will run this one. The police who demand this jail will fill it. And our communities—the same communities with the least voice in this decision—will pay for it.
Question 1 & The Path Ahead
If you’ve been told that supporting this jail is pragmatic, ask: for whom?
It’s not pragmatic for the families burying their children after preventable deaths in custody.
It’s not pragmatic to starve community organizations of funding while handing blank checks to billion-dollar jail contractors and private developers that feed the prison industrial complex.
It’s not pragmatic for poor and working people who already struggle to pay for groceries and basic necessities, or whose public transportation in KC is being stripped away.
It’s not pragmatic for a city that claims to value equity, healing, and Black life.
Kansas City deserves more than a newer, better-funded slave-era relic. We deserve housing, care, healing, and a future beyond cages.
Vote NO.
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ABOUT DEFENDER EDITORIALS
This article is part of The Defender Editorial Series, our official opinion section.
At The Kansas City Defender, we distinguish between reporting and editorial writing:
- Our reporting is rooted in data, documentation, and on-the-ground sourcing. It exposes injustice, centers Black voices, and holds power accountable.
- Our editorials and opinion columns are explicitly framed pieces. They go beyond the what/where/when to offer cultural context, political analysis, and movement-grounded perspective. They’re written not from above or outside—but from within our communities, our struggles, and our visions for liberation.
We proudly acknowledge that our editorial and opinion writers are often the same people who report our stories. We believe there is no contradiction between rigorous journalism and unapologetic moral clarity.
We are not neutral. We are with the people.
