A mid-March ground breaking has been scheduled for the Cayman Islands Youth Centre, the long-discussed youth remand facility to be located adjacent to Her Majesty’s Prison at Fairbanks for women.
According to the minutes of the 6 February meeting among Deputy Governor Franz Manderson and the governments’ chief officers, the Ministry of Community Affairs, Gender and Housing intends to hold the ceremony at 4pm, Thursday, 15 March. That is one day after the official opening of the “Therapeutic Community” at the Bonaventure Boys Home.
Separate youth, adult facilities
The government is taking advantage of the 2009 constitutional mandate to separate youth and adult offenders in order to overhaul the Islands’ system of handling juvenile offenders.
Once the youth remand facility is complete, the young male offenders will move there from Bonaventure. Young female offenders will move into Bonaventure, which is being renovated in order to accommodate a therapeutic approach to corrections modelled after the Missouri Youth Services Institute in the United States. In late August, the Central Planning Authority granted permission for the 21,000-square-foot youth remand facility, which at the time had an estimated construction cost of $8 million. Earlier budget predictions estimated the cost at $6 million, with $3 million allocated in the 2011-2012 budget for construction.
The prison system faces a November 2013 deadline to comply with standards in the Bill of Rights attached to the 2009 Constitution. Part of the plan involves complete separation of adult prisoners and those younger than 18. Currently, some juvenile male offenders are housed at Her Majesty’s Prison at Northward, and some adult male offenders are housed at Eagle House Juvenile Detention facility. Until the specialised youth remand facility is built, rehabilitative services are being provided at Bonaventure and Frances Bodden Girls Home.
According to the latest available data, there were 209 inmates at Northward, 17 per cent more than the certified national accommodation of 179 prisoners.
Site plans
The youth centre was originally proposed to be built on the eastern end of Grand Cayman, but Missouri consultants recommended that it instead be built in George Town, behind the Fairbanks prison. The site is also home to the Cayman Islands Immigration Detention Centre for illegally landed migrants, which has been deemed “uninhabitable” by the Cayman Islands Prisons Inspection Board. Because the building has been shuttered, the Immigration Department has set up temporary trailers on the site to house Cuban boat migrants who arrive in the Islands. Chief Immigration Officer Linda Evans recently said the Immigration Detention Centre has been out of commission since late 2008, there hasn’t been funding to repair it, and there won’t be funding for repairs during the next budget year. As of July 2011, the youth centre was slated to be built where the trailer park stood.
In January 2008, the Planning Authority rezoned the site from Institutional to Low Density Residential to accommodate a 78-lot low-cost housing programme subdivision, but that approval has expired, according to Planning Authority meeting minutes.
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