Eric Bush, Home Affairs Ministry Chief Officer, said a temporary new stand-alone facility at HMP Northward to house young offenders is being constructed.

Bush was speaking to legislators during a special sitting of Finance Committee on Wednesday (4).

The deadline for when the government must meet the requirement in the Bill of Rights that children should not be held in custody in an adult jail is only two months away.

This temporary facility was described by Bush as “the minimum requirements” necessary to comply.

However, this does not meet the Cayman Islands 2009 Constitution Order’s Bill of Rights, Section 6, requirement that not only juvenile and adult prisoners must be housed separately, but also remand prisoners must also be kept apart from convicted inmates.

Bush said at this time there were no plans “for separation of juvenile females from adult female prisoners.”

When the question was raised by East End MLA Arden McLean that he had been told by the previous PPM government simply keeping juveniles locked up in a separate building on the Northward property would not meet legal requirements what had changed, Moses Kirkconnell, the Deputy Premier, answered, “What we looked for was a temporary solution … which the chief officer [Bush] has found up to this point. In the short term, this was the best solution we could come up with.”

He acknowledged it was not an ideal solution but the new government had inherited the problem.

The previous PPM government had planned a facility on the Fairbanks site costing almost $10M to construct and at least $2M a year to maintain. The foundations had been constructed at a cost of $1.3M. The new Progressive’s government had to abandon this because of funding problems.

North Side MLA Ezzard Miller after voicing his disappointment said, “It appears this is an arbitrary situation and I encourage the government to address this appropriately.”

It was estimated 35 young people at present were in need of secure accommodation.