by BRYAN WALKER

A NEW FIRE seems to have been ignited over Government's plans to build an expansive juvenile facility near the $292 million prison at Dodds, St Philip.

A senior Government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a number of professionals were opposed to the plan – which would replace the Government Industrial School (GIS), Dodds for boys and Summerville for girls – but were unwilling to speak out publicly on the matter.

Their concerns ranged from the proximity of the wards to a maximum security prison, to the stigma likely to be attached to the reformatory facility.

WEEKEND NATION investigations revealed an area to the northeast of GIS was recently surveyed to identify a spot for the new facility. This, according to highly placed Government sources, would place the juvenile centre "less than 1 000 yards" from the new 1 250-capacity jail.

The official said this was also contrary to certain international conventions which advised against housing juveniles near to adults and hardened criminals.

"Most jurisdictions try to move juveniles as far away as possible from adults. When you take into account the [expanse of the] prison farm around the new jail, this new facility may then be in the midst of the prison farm. The prisoners on farm lands would be within sight of the new Dodds facility. How can you justify putting a new detention facility for children 11 to 18 years old next to a maximum security prison?" the official asked.

Officials also feared that rather than being seen as a reformatory school, the juvenile centre would become synonymous with prison and the penal culture. This, they added, would have further negative psychological effects already on children struggling with deviant behaviour.

Proximity not a cause for behaviour

However, Attorney-General Dale Marshall has dismissed such fears, drawing an analogy to the old prison at Glendairy, destroyed by fire in 2005.

"The fact is that Glendairy was right next to a police station, it was in the middl of a dense residential community . . . . There was never any indication that any young impressionable boy or girl was influenced by anybody who was incarcerated in Glendairy.

"You had the prison farm being in the locale. There was never any indication that any young impressionable boy or girl was influenced by the proximity of the prison farm.

"Proximity does not turn people into deviants or criminals. Proximity will not worsen the situation of young boys who are sent to reform school. It will not cause them to worsen their behaviour," he told the WEEKEND NATION.

"The siting of a new prison at Dodds didn't come up as a result of the fire [at Glendairy] in 2005. It has always been the plan to put a maximum security facility up there, and at no time was it ever argued that we should therefore move the youngsters from Dodds. I think we are putting up a straw man to knock it down again."

Marshall said the new facility, part of a project being financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, was still in its planning stages.

"At this point we do not have designs for it. No target dates for completion. No plans have been completed. We are still in the seminal stages of this work.

"The need for [the facility] has become even more urgent in as much as the new prison at Dodds would have resulted in us having to find new housing for the girls at Summerville because what was formerly Summerville has been incorporated into the prison facility.

"We felt that we needed to put modernised facilities . . . to offer more options in terms of rehabilitation and so on. We are continuing to work on this. We are moving to temporarily relocate the girls down to St Lucy [at Barrows Children's Home] until the new juvenile facility is completed."

No cross contact between two

Meantime, chairman of the Child Care Board, David "Joey" Harper, said while he was not privy to plans for the facility, he wanted certain provisions in place to ensure there was no "cross-fertilisation" of the youngsters with seasoned offenders.

"From time to time there have been escapes from Dodds because Dodds is not maximum security . . . and is a place primarily set up for the rehabilitation of children who may not necessarily be criminal at all. There must absolutely be no cross contact between the two institutions," he said.

He suggested an alternative location.

"I would like to see a place like Bath [St John], where the old Earth Station was located, being refitted with a training and schooling environment far away from a prison environment. Otherwise the impression that may very well be given is that both the children at Dodds, and the prisoners at Dodds, are cross-linked . . . .

"I would not like to see a situation where the word Dodds means prison. I would like to see that children . . . are given an opportunity to come back into society and not finding themselves stigmatised by the term 'Dodds' meaning prison."

Magistrate Faith Marshall-Harris, who is assigned to the Juvenile Court, said though she hadn't had "any official notification on the new facility", she too would have preferred a different site.

"I would love to see such a place [the new facility], because we need it, [but] you want it to be as far as possible geographically . . . lest it becomes confused in people's minds with being some kind of junior prison."

When contacted, GIS prinicipal Erwin Leacock said it was a matter of policy and an isssue he was unwilling to discuss with the Press. l bryanwalker @nationnews.com