$1m paid for controversial youth prison site

Child Youth and Family has already spent more than $1 million on the site where it plans to build a controversial youth prison.

News this week of CYF's preference for the location at Kaharoa, 20km north of Rotorua, sparked a massive backlash from furious locals.

Officials have revealed the department paid just over $1 million for the 19ha farm. The deal went unconditional last Friday. The youth prison, which could be up and running as early as 2008, has residents and landowners worried about the effect it could have on their property prices and wellbeing.

The facility will cost $40 million to build and about $9 million per year to run. Between 60 and 70 full-time staff would be employed to run the prison.

CYF senior communications manager Rhiannon Symmons confirmed the land was purchased from a company called Castlerock.

While other conditional agreements had been made by CYF on other prospective sites, they had since lapsed, Ms Symmons said.

"We paid a comparable price [for the Kaharoa site] to all of the other sites we looked at," she said.

A deadline for public consultation has been extended from February 4 to March 18.

Evan Parnwell , whose property is bordered on two sides by the site, was one of the few nearby property owners contacted by Opus International Consultants, which is handling the department's consent application.

"When I had a read through the glossy brochure they had produced to sell it to us I thought I was looking at a catalogue for a retirement village, until I got down to the part which pointed out it was actually a prison.

"I'm 59 years old. I have got my life's savings I have strived for locked up in this property."

Mr Parnwell was also fearful of the inmates.

"Prisons have break-outs and you read about them regularly these days... Should a couple of those kids escape, the first thing they will want to do is to get away from here as fast as possible and what better way to do that than with a knife at my wife's throat and demanding the keys to the car."

Ms Symmons said only four inmates had escaped from a similar facility in Manukau over the past two years.

- DAILY POST (ROTORUA)