treatment of offenders, says a top official.

Mr. Derrick Binns, who is overseeing the move from Casemates to the new site, said the building's design has already been praised by America's Institute of Architecture for "innovation and excellence''.

And if Bermudians support the methods to be used in the new prison it could set standards worldwide, he said.

Mr. Binns, the project's transition co-ordinator, said he hoped the Prisons Department would soon be known as the Correctional Service, reflecting new thinking.

In a speech to the Kiwanis Club this week, he said: "We will be a correctional service, moving away from a primary emphasis on custody to an emphasis on security and changing behaviour.'' Rehabilitation often failed if it was aimed at groups of prisoners. It was better to tailor treatment to fit the individual offender.

"We believe, in order to bring about significant behavioural change, we need to look at persons in our custody as individuals, not as a particular category of offender.

"We need to identify their individual needs and then set out to assist them to meet those needs.

"Training and development'' would be the keynotes of the new service, he said.

Mr. Binns said the new prison, due to open next fall with 220 cells, would be an example to other countries of how to run different types of facilities on one site.

The $40 million complex would contain a pre-trial jail, a maximum security prison, a medium security prison and an intake centre.

Its computerised security and emergency monitoring system would be the first of its kind outside North America.

Mr. Binns called on residents to help make the service a world leader in community relations.

He said the "correctional facility'' needed a partnership with the community, "so that when persons are released they will have an opportunity to demonstrate that they can be more productive and positive citizens.

"This will require our community to begin to challenge their beliefs, their assumptions about those in our custody, and to view them as individuals, as people who are not necessarily lost to our community, but people who can, if given the opportunity, be productive, contributing members of our community.

"Without community support, no significant change in the results of the department will be seen.''