The Yukon's assistant deputy minister of community justice is so impressed by the territory's planned correctional facility, he says it makes him want to go back to jail.

"I've been in jail a long time," Bob Riches joked during a technical briefing Monday afternoon, referring to his 20 years' experience as a corrections officer and warden. "If I could go back in time, this is the kind of centre I'd like to run."

The new jail - which will replace the current Whitehorse Correctional Centre east of Takhini - is still in the planning stage, but is scheduled to be finished by 2012 at a total cost of $67 million. It will be able to hold up to 168 male and female inmates at a time.

"It's the way we should do corrections," Riches said, citing design features such as abundant natural light, wood finishings and indoor/outdoor exercise yards.

He said these kinds of details make for a calmer inmate population, making it easier to deliver rehabilitation programming and ensuring a safer workplace for the guards.

He called the new jail a "generation three facility" because instead of the guards being separated from inmates as they were in the first Canadian jails, or being put amongst the inmates without sufficient backup as they have been until recently, the guards can move around the common areas under constant supervision.

In the new jail, a central control room looks over all areas of the three-level facility through mirrored glass.

This way, Riches said, guards and other employees can work and interact with the prisoners, safe in the knowledge that someone is watching their backs.

"The guard can call up, say, 'I'm going to level three' and know someone is there looking out for him."

To back up the guards, there will be cameras throughout the facility, in all areas except the regular cells.

Security is the foremost concern in any jail or prison, but at the new WCC, it will be even more so.

Sandwiched between the men's 84-unit jail and the women's 18-unit jail will be a two-level "multi-use treatment space that will be utilized by the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Social Services and various non-government organizations," according to the plans.

"(Groups) can operate within this area without ever seeing an inmate," Riches said.

The centre part of the building will house several services for inmates and others: A medical/dental office, a classroom, a small workshop, an area for "spirituality and first nations cultural programming," and more.

And to really bring it into the 21st century, the whole thing will be built to "green standards," according to project manager Peter Bloom.

The building of this new facility was called for in a 2006 report on the Yukon's correctional services, which had damning criticism for the current state of affairs.

"Neither the physical infrastructure - in particular, the Whitehorse Correctional Centre - nor the administrative infrastructure encourages the development of effective, empirically-based correctional services," the report said.

"...There is no coherent philosophy for why correctional services are delivered, no common understanding of how these services should be delivered and no structured method for evaluating whether programs have been successful.

"While many individuals make important contributions to the lives of victims and offenders, the correctional system as a whole has not fostered a culture of professionalism and respect."

Since then, the Department of Justice has been scrambling to shape itself up.

Apart from the new jail, a new Corrections Act has been written and was tabled last week in the legislature.

The act includes a statement of principles - something missing from its predecessor - and is unique in Canada in that it allows the head of the department to put any or all correctional services in the hands of first nations and NGOs.