One of the Island's leading children's charities has urged Government not to spend $9 million on opening a new centre for young offenders.

Sheelagh Cooper, head of the Coalition for the Protection of Children, said she believed teenagers at risk of going off the rails should receive counselling and diagnostic treatment, rather than being locked up away from the community.

She spoke out after the Royal Gazette reported Government's plan to open a new dual-purpose centre that will provide security for more serious young offenders, as well as a residential area for youngsters at risk.

Health and Social Services Minister Nelson Bascome said it would provide both counselling and treatment services, as well as a full-time education for school-age offenders.

The objective, he said, was to change behaviour and to get the offenders back out on the straight and narrow in the community. Yesterday, Mrs Cooper said she was very anxious to work with Mr. Bascome in this initiative, but wanted to make sure the treatment facilities did not become secondary in the project.

She said: "There is no question that we are seeing behaviour in some of our young people that is very challenging and we are pleased to see Government responding to that challenge. It is always easier to ignore these problems and hope that they go away.

"We do feel, however, that the nature of our response to this challenge needs some further examination.

"The Government has made good progress through the Alternative to Incarceration initiative in developing and planning for non-incarceration options for adults. We are having trouble understanding why just the opposite approach is being suggested for juveniles. The two approaches seem to be at odds with each other.'' Mrs Cooper said Bermuda was so far behind in terms of how it treated young offenders, it was actually now ahead.

She said every other jurisdiction in the developed world was working towards phasing out locked juvenile facilities and moving towards small, community-based group home settings, which she said Bermuda already had.

The Coalition leader said: "The thing that is missing in our existing system is treatment. We need earlier diagnosis and treatment of children with emotional, behavioural or psychiatric problems. The $9 million allocated for this facility, in our view, would be better spent adding to the available counselling and diagnostic staff in the Department of Education and increasing the ratios of treatment staff to juveniles in the group homes and, adding perhaps, one additional group home that would be a secure facility to handle juveniles who need that level of supervision.

"This approach will be pro-active and much less costly.'' And she said the Coalition had plans for a psychiatric facility to identify and provide treatment for children with problems at a much younger age so that they never got to the stage where they had to be incarcerated as teenagers.

Mrs Cooper said the Coalition's initiative was a preventative one that would address the needs of children as young as four and five-years-old.

Juvenile care centre plea She added: "We would simply rather see the money used for direct delivery of diagnostic and treatment service before these children reach such a critical stage.

"We are doubtful that if this facility is built there will be much left over to properly provide the level of early identification of treatment of children to ensure that they don't end up in there.'' Mr. Bascome was not available for comment last night.