A planned youth prison in Perth for high-risk offenders to replace the notorious Unit 18 precinct could still be three years away and cost at least $50 million more than initially thought.

WARNING: This article contains the name of an Indigenous person who has died.

Unit 18, inside the maximum-security adult Casuarina Prison, was hastily converted into a youth detention facility in mid-2022 in what was meant to be a temporary measure for about a year.

But it was still open in October 2023 when 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd took his own life in his cell in Unit 18, becoming Western Australia's first recorded death in youth detention.

As the government scrambled to address longstanding issues in youth justice in the months that followed, it announced plans to build a purpose-designed faci

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