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The Office of the Auditor General is probing the operation of Yukon’s $75-million Whitehorse Correctional Centre, which is being branded a failure and a waste of taxpayers’ money by critics.

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With a staff of more than 110, the jail costs $10-million a year to run, but currently only houses about 70 people, though it has a capacity for 194. The majority of people in the jail are aboriginal, many of whom have substance abuse problems.

Questions about how justice is delivered in the state-of-the-art jail and the wider community are being asked as part of an audit of the Yukon’s department of justice. The final report will be released in Feb. 2015.

Community groups contend the high-tech prison, which replaced an 85-bed facility, is not what was expected after extensive community consultation prior to building.

If half of the money it took to build it was spent on badly needed housing or addictions services, we would be a lot better off. They turned a community jail into a gulag

First Nation leaders were clear the new corrections centre should be based on rehabilitation and healing and not be punitive in nature.

The new jail is “minimum to maximum” security, and critics say there is no rehabilitation.

Linda Bonnefoy, chair of the Yukon Civil Liberties Association, said the prison seemed to be part of the Conservative government’s plan to build American-style super prisons.