One of the teenage boys who caused more than $1 million damage to a local school received no consideration during sentencing for the fact that he was the first to go to the Police.

And that same teenager comes from a partly black family which should be kept in mind by those attempting to play the "race card'' in the matter, the boy's grandmother said yesterday.

The woman was speaking out about the treatment of her grandson by the courts after he was sentenced to two years in an approved facility for setting fires on February 19, 1999 which led to $1.3 million in damage being caused to Harrington Sound Primary School.

The grandmother, who like the boys cannot be named for legal reasons, stressed: "First and foremost, I am neither condoning nor condemning what these boys have done. They must pay the penalty for their actions.'' The grandmother continued: "However my grandson was the one who went to the Police Station and gave the officers there all the information relating to this matter after discussing it with his mother.

"The other two boys never owned up to what they had done. The only reason they caught the others was because of their fingerprints.'' Despite this, the teenager received the same two-year sentence in an approved society earlier this week as the other two boys.

They were set to be sent to an overseas detention facility for a full psychiatric assessment before further treatment and intervention procedures were implemented but that situation has since changed with the assessor now due to come to the Island.

The grandmother said the sentence seemed very strict and pointed to a need for a revamp of the Island's court system and sentencing laws.

She said: "The whole court system needs to be revamped. The courts should be able to make a decision which does not involve simply locking people up. I think these boys need to do some community service -- sending them away will just break their hearts. Two wrongs do not make a right.'' And she called on the Scoutmasters in charge of the meeting the boys were attending on February 19 of last year to be held accountable -- to some degree -- for what happened.

They were at the school for a Boy Scout meeting but left the meeting and wandered about the building setting fires and then dousing them.

However three hours later a motorist reported the building was completely ablaze.

She likened it to leaving a baby in the care of a nursery.

"When you leave your child at a nursery, who is supposed to be looking after it? When these three boys got up to walk out of the meeting a Scoutmaster should have said `Where do you think you are going? You are here for a meeting. Sit down and pay attention'.

"I hold them responsible, not for what these boys did, but for not seeing that these boys were in good hands.'' And she expressed her frustration over members of the community who were playing the race card by stressing the colour of the boys' skins when they referred to the seemingly preferential treatment the boys were receiving.

Arson sentence criticised "People should not continue to say that all these boys are white. My grandson comes from black heritage. They should not try to make a racial issue out of it.'' But she said people have done so by pointing to the fact that the boys were released into their parents' care after being sentenced to the approved society -- Observatory Cottage -- and were set to go overseas for assessment within two weeks while other teenagers have been forced to wait for the same chance for more than a year.

The decision to release the boys into their parents' care was made by the director of Observatory Cottage who said the facility was not equipped to handle arsonists.

And Health Minister Nelson Bascome first decided to send the boys overseas for an assessment relating to arson because the local psychiatric evaluations they received did not cover this area.

He has since decided to bring the assessor to the Island but maintains that his decision on the boys' future would be guided by the directives contained in the assessment.