The Nova Scotia Youth Centre — or Waterville jail, as its inmates call it — sits in the heart of farmland in the Annapolis Valley, a cluster of green-roofed buildings that looks like a college campus.

A closer look offers a hint at its real purpose. The buildings form a ring around a courtyard and recreation field. The exits from all of the buildings, except from the main administration centre, lead into the courtyard. Large fences covered in opaque plastic link the buildings. The only way in or out of the complex is through the administration building.

Once visitors are a few metres inside that building, they must walk through a set of large locked doors. Those must be closed and locked behind the visitor before a second set of identical doors is opened to reveal the jail itself.

The Nova Scotia Youth Centre
(Phonse Jessome/CBC)

At first glance, there is nothing jail-like about this place. There are no bars in the main common area, no institutional green paint on the walls, no steel mesh in front of the main guard station. The guards don't even wear uniforms. Age and the radios clipped to their belts are the only things that set them apart from the inmates, who also dress in casual street clothes.

The main guard station looks like a reception desk at any large business. Behind the desk, there is a bank of monitors and the switches that control the opening and closing of the doors.

Beyond the desk, the visiting area is a wide-open room with comfortable padded chairs facing small tables. Everything is bolted down. The rear wall is all glass revealing the courtyard and recreation area beyond. On the far right behind another glass wall is the lunchroom.

More than a dozen inmates sit at the tables, eating, laughing and teasing one another. They are well behaved even in the presence of a TV camera. It's a stark contrast to how young criminals behave in front of cameras in courthouses across the province. Here there are no hard stares, no curses or threats. Yet these are the worst of the worst — convicted killers, rapists and violent thieves.

Lunchroom in the
Nova Scotia Youth Centre
(Phonse Jessome/CBC)

Mike Sampson, the assistant superintendent at Waterville, says the inmates' behaviour here is not at all remarkable.

"They learn quickly here that if they break a rule or act out, there are immediate consequences. They are expected to act a certain way here and within a very short time after their arrival, they do that."

The punishments for breaking institutional rules range from a loss of recreation privileges to a 10-day segregation in the discipline unit.

Critics of the justice system cite the delay between act and consequence as one of the reasons these young men become repeat offenders. Often they commit a series of crimes between the initial arrests and their final convictions on their first offences.

The kids here — and they do seem like kids and not hardened criminals — are mostly white and range in age from 12 to 18. Because they wear their own street clothes, you can see they come from the same basic socio-economic background. The clothes are nice but faded and a little too worn.

Waterville superintendent Alyson Muzzerall says the inmates have much in common with each other and with all the teenagers who have moved through this place.

She says teen offenders tend to come from foster homes or homes where drug and alcohol abuse, and even child abuse, is rampant. They often suffer from learning disabilities and can't cope in the school system. There are exceptions to all of this, but there are also definite patterns that youth workers recognize in troubled kids.

Continued...Bigger, bolder Billard