The Yukon will have a new jail soon.

That's the promise of the Liberals and the NDP. Both made the announcement on Friday as part of their Oct. 10 election platforms.

'The Whitehorse Correctional Centre needs to be replaced. There's no ignoring this fact,' said Phil Treusch, the Liberal candidate for Riverdale South and a former employee at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre.

Hours later, the NDP put out a release making the same commitment.

'This should have happened a long time ago, but there wasn't the political will,' said John Edzerza, the Yukon Party's former Justice minister who is now running as the NDP candidate in McIntyre-Takhini.

The current Whitehorse Correctional Centre has been open since 1967. With continued renovations to keep the building intact, its replacement is considered by many to be long overdue.

A new jail was originally put on the books in 1999 when the then-NDP government began putting money toward the new building.

The Liberal party government, under the leadership of former premier Pat Duncan, then spent more than $2 million on the early stages of a new correctional facility before the Yukon Party took office in 2002 and halted the project.

Since that time, almost $1.5 million has gone into repairing the crumbling facility.

'It's absurd to keep pouring money into a decrepit building that doesn't serve the needs of the workers or the inmates,' said Dave Hobbis, the NDP's candidate in Porter Creek North.

'This project was put off for four years by the Yukon Party and at the same time millions of tax dollars have been wasted by trying to fix a building that is beyond repair,' agreed Treusch.

If elected, the Liberals would have the building completed by the end of their five-year mandate, said Treusch.

However, the delays of the Yukon Party government may mean that some of the information on the needs of the new facility is outdated and stakeholders must be contacted to determine how to go forward, he said.

Treusch was unable to comment on where the Liberals would build the new facility.

The Yukon Party released a 236-page report on corrections in the Yukon last April. It was the product 15 months of work and consultations across the territory.

The information in that document is adequate, said Edzerza, who was involved in the review.

'The committee is saying, Let's get going on this,' ' he said.

Some of the information in the report may be useful, said Treusch, but the actual document focused more on healing and preventive measures than the building of a jail.

'The basic foundation of the jail has to be there and that's the part they didn't spend much time on.'

Programming is highly important, said Treusch, but the proper facilities and space must be available to provide them.

'A healthy community includes a facility that can safely house those convicted of crimes while offering reasonable programming to reduce recidivism,' he said. 'A jail with better programming will actually help prevent crime.'

The Liberals' focus would be on new programming, training, counselling and first nations healing initiatives, he said.

'There's only so much we can do in a facility that is overcrowded and designed more for warehousing people than for helping them heal,' said Kevin Barr, the NDP candidate in Southern Lakes.

The whole setup doesn't address the needs of the corrections system in 2006, he said.

'It's time to do it. We've done enough consultation,' said Barr. 'We've got the information and now it's time to go ahead.'