The Tribune

A GROUP of girl residents of the Willie Mae Pratt Centre for Girls are expected to face charges after they damaged a dorm in an attempt to escape the facility, according to the Ministry of Social Services and Urban Development.

“The public is advised that around 1am on Thursday, February 28, 2019, a group of residents at the Willie Mae Pratt Centre for Girls managed to get out of the dorm in which they were housed, but were contained in the quadrangle as a result of the security protocols implemented at the facility,” a statement sent by the ministry on Friday noted. “Others damaged a second dorm in an attempt to escape. The police have taken the residents into custody and charges are expected to be filed.”

Escapes and attempted escapes from juvenile detention centres are nothing new. In October, four boys ran away from the Simpson Penn Centre for Boys in Fox Hill. And in August, police reported that 13 male residents had escaped from the facility. In 2011, it was reported that five boys escaped from the centre and seven boys were said to have run away from the centre in 2012.

The Willie Mae Centre has also had problems in the past. In late 2014, a teen resident died in what was suspected to be a suicide and in 2012, a 16-year-old resident of the centre tried to commit suicide. According to the officials at the time, she was rushed to Princess Margaret Hospital and later transferred to the Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre.

In August 2012, then Free National Movement Deputy Leader Loretta Butler-Turner, the former minister of social services, said a “near riot” three months earlier had resulted in six inmates being remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison, now the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services. Mrs Butler-Turner also said at that time that residents were “constantly breaking the residences up” and pulling toilets “right out of the floor.”