A new prison capable of comfortably housing 250 people, including dedicated facilities for mental health and juvenile inmates, is in the long-term plans for the future of Cayman’s justice infrastructure.
The full build is likely to cost in excess of $100 million over several years. It will include capacity to expand significantly to accommodate at least 400 inmates through shared cell space.
Minister of Home Affairs Nickolas DaCosta secured $12 million across 2026 and 2027 as the first concrete commitment to get the project started. Initial design work is expected to be completed this year.
Some of that money will need to be spent on repairing roofs and windows, and funding electrical upgrades and a new kitchen at the existing HMP Northward facility, simply to keep the condemned buildings functional while a replacement is built.
Some will go towards design and preliminary work on the new facility, which officials aim to build on Crown land adjacent to the existing site.
It will bring men, women and young offenders onto a single estate, ending the arrangement under which female inmates are held at HMP Fairbanks, a building first occupied as a temporary measure in 1999.
There are currently 271 inmates being held across the prisons system.
The design will also include a dedicated care and separation unit for vulnerable prisoners and those with acute mental health needs, a provision that does not currently exist.
DaCosta acknowledged the buildings at HMP Northward had been condemned for two decades, and that the safety and security challenges of mixing inmates with serious mental health issues with the general population had been evident for just as long.
He said the project has to be tackled in phases because funding is unlikely to ever be available in one tranche, given annual capital spending capacity of between $100 million and $200 million in total.
“There are so many competing priorities for capital infrastructure in the country, it’s always a fight to allocate funding for building a new prison,” DaCosta said.
“Previous governments always failed at securing funding for the new prison build because they were overly ambitious. They would approach their colleagues and say, ‘I need $100 million to build this prison and I need it in these two years.’”
He said the new plan was to focus on completing the most critical aspects, including accommodation, entry points and security infrastructure first, and then progress the rest of the project in increments over several years. A safe and staged construction schedule will be part of the design and planning phase.
“We knock out bits and pieces year after year,” he said. “What is most critical – we address that first.”
Some of the underlying infrastructure work is already beginning. One of the key projects over the next two years will be to install a new wastewater management facility that can service the existing prison.
The plant will be designed as transitional infrastructure that can be adapted to service a new prison once that is built.
Lisa Malice, deputy chief officer in the Ministry of Home Affairs, said new infrastructure was critical to resolving many of the issues across the system.
A new plan would allow for better segregation between different types of prisoners and contain higher-security elements for the most dangerous ‘Category A’ offenders.
Care and separation for juveniles and vulnerable populations is also necessary.
Malice added, “One of the things that has been key in the design of the new prison is the need for us to have a care and separation unit, so that vulnerable individuals who do have to come to prison, we’re able to separate them and manage them differently. We don’t have the ability to do that in the existing facility.”
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While replacing a condemned facility seems like a necessity, a massive $100 million price tag is a reminder of why Cayman must prioritize disciplined spending.
The ultimate goal of our government should be to stay steady in changing winds by keeping budgets small and strictly controlling capital expenditure. This will prevent the need for new and increasing taxes, which only drive up our cost of living.
A phased approach to this prison is acceptable if it enforces rigorous cost controls and prevents the kind of bloated, runaway infrastructure spending that inevitably falls on the shoulders of Caymanians and residents.
Ultimately, pairing fiscal conservatism with higher levels of deportation for foreign offenders is the best way to keep our island economically stable for our children and grandchildren.
We can thank the Compass for this “development”, as our bureaucracy has always tended to the reactive rather than the proactive approach. The other problem is that over 90% of Government’s billion dollar revenue is spent on it’s army of administrators and Govt officials. Instead of raising a relatively small amounnt of funds from the fee increase on driving licenses causing the maximum hardship to those affected, Govt should look at trimming it’s army of civil servants and bureaucrats which would have a far greater effect on net revenue.
Hear, hear