Boone Sheriff Asks $1.9M to Keep Housing Inmates Elsewhere

Boone County’s jail is so full that Sheriff Dwayne Carey is asking the county commission for nearly $1.9 million just to keep paying other counties to hold Boone County detainees through the end of the year. The commission held a first reading of the request on Thursday, Oct. 15, according to KOMU 8.

Why does Boone County need to pay other jails?

Carey told KOMU 8 the sheriff’s office has dealt with jail overcapacity for 35 years, and the money set aside for out-of-county housing this year is already gone. “Yeah, broke,” Carey said of the budget. The request would shift money from the county’s general revenue into the jail account to cover the rest of 2026.

Right now, Boone County detainees are held in Carter, Greene and Lincoln counties and in Springfield. About 60 are in Lincoln County alone, which charges $85 per person per day — $5,100 a day, or roughly $158,100 a month, for that group alone, KOMU 8 reported.

Carey pointed to a specific driver behind the recent spike: the Columbia Police Department hired 24 officers between fall 2024 and fall 2025, which meant more arrests and more bookings. “We went up 600 (bookings), and then that’s when we started really seeing the spike,” he said. Housing options are also running thin. “We’re pretty much just about everywhere,” Carey told KOMU 8.

How does this connect to the jail tax on the Nov. 3 ballot?

This $1.9 million mid-year request is separate from, but closely tied to, Proposition L, the 3/8-cent sales tax increase Boone County voters (including everyone in Rocheport) decide on Nov. 3. As our Prop L explainer reported, out-of-county housing cost the county about $499,000 in 2022, more than $2.5 million in all of 2025, and already topped $1 million in the first quarter of 2026 alone — a trend the county itself has called “unstable.” Carey’s new request shows that trend hasn’t slowed. Even if voters approve Prop L, county leaders have said a new jail is still years away, so out-of-county housing bills would keep coming during construction.

For the ballot language itself, see our Boone County ballot guide. Early voting is already underway; Boone County voters can find hours and locations in our early-voting guide.