Construction has started on the long-awaited $8 million Cayman Islands Youth Centre, with a gala ground-breaking ceremony attended by top officials, anticipating a May 2013 opening in time for next year’s elections.

Addressing the Thursday ceremony, Minister for Community Affairs Mike Adam, charged with bringing the project to fruition, told the gathering that the new centre – initially scheduled to hold 22 males under age 18 on the 30-acre site – would seek to “restore“ young offenders through a combination of education, therapy and training, underscored by constant vigilance.

“The youth centre home will be for offending youth, who have been victims of poor parenting, poor education, drug abuse, psychiatric disorders and emotional abuse, and will prevent a slide into anti-social and delinquent behaviour,” he said, pointing to successes with the programme’s Missouri Youth Services Institute model.

An alternate to punitive systems of juvenile justice, the11-stage  “Missouri Model” seeks to de-emphasise traditional “correctional” prison functions, moving “toward a rehabilitative and therapeutic model where youth are treated in a humane and nurturing environment that results in the youth making positive and long-lasting changes,” according to institute literature.

Adopted in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, nearby Santa Cara County and in the states of Louisiana and New Mexico, the programme, developed and localised with programme founder Mark Steward, points to dramatically reduced rates of youth crime, violence and re-offending.

“Thirty years ago,” Mr Adam said, “Missouri closed its punitive facilities and now boasts some impressive statistics. Three years after discharge, in 98 percent of cases there has been no recidivism,” he said, underlining consistently high rates of re-offending in the Cayman Islands prison system. Recent studies at Northward have lamented a lack of effective rehabilitation and education services.

Divided into “cottages” of between 10 people and 12 people, the regime of vocational and academic training, group therapy and other activities, closely monitored by residential counsellors will “explore and confront family behavioural issues, so young people can understand and correct their behaviour, and can see that they are responsible for it.

“It will require sustained support to prevent the revolving door of youth crime,” Mr Adam said.

Since September, West Bay’s Bonaventure Home has been testing a pilot Missouri programme, credited by Mr Adam with already enabling some residents to return to mainstream schooling. In future, the remodelled home will accommodate both males and females, some transferred from Frances Bodden Girls Home while the new youth centre will also include a Secure Remand Unit.

A newly created “Youth Empowerment Services” will manage the new youth centre, intended, Mr Adam said, “to recapture the hearts and minds of our youth and give young people a second chance.”

Speakers thanked departed former Cayman Islands Chief Magistrate Margaret Ramsay-Hale, founder of both the drug and domestic – violence courts and the new Family Court, to be managed by her successor and newest High Court Justice Richard Williams. Ms Ramsay-Hale left Cayman in October to tale up a 1 November appointment to the Turks and Caicos Islands High Court.

“The judiciary for many years has been calling for a place for youths to be restored to a place in society,” Justice Williams said. “The Missouri model is for the rehabilitation and restoration of our young people, actively engaging them to make lasting changes.

“Behaviour is often symptomatic of unmet needs. We must restore them, but also prevent them from offending in the first place,” he said. “One of the building blocks of family law is the building block of preemptive intervention and hope in the Family Court.”

Minister Mark Scotland, speaking on behalf of Premier McKeeva Bush, in tax-legislation talks in the US capital, warned, however, that the centre’s programmes were not to be treated lightly.

“We are showing our commitment to at-risk youth of our islands. We are not giving up on them, but anyone who mistakes this for a soft touch, well, the Missiouri model works and it reduces recidivism. It is a safe and orderly environment, but it is still a place of remand that is able to contain offenders. Prison is not an ideal answer and that is why we are doing this, extending our hand to those that might have fallen, helping them to dust off and join our community.”