DAILY POST YOUR VOICE IN WALES: Prison jobs will be a lifesaver for region.

AT last! Some excellent economic news to cheer about. The long-awaited new prison promised for Wales is to be built on the outskirts of Caernarfon.

That's great for the town and for the region as a whole, although we must remember that Wrexham's hopes have now been dashed.

But the choice of the old Ferodo factory at Caernarfon is a good one, particularly as there was no guarantee that anywhere in North Wales would get the contract which might well have gone further south.

The benefits to the economy in both the short and long term will be huge, at least if research commissioned by the North Wales Criminal Justice Board proves accurate.

There will be, the Board promises, 850 construction jobs of which 230 will be in the immediate Caernarfon area with a further 620 in the region as a whole, boosting the economy by pounds 11m over the three years building work will take.

On top of this will come a further 1,000 permanent jobs created once the prison is up and running: 480 employed by the prison itself and a further 560 in the wider region employed as suppliers, providing a pounds 17m annual shot in the arm for the local economy far into the future.

In rural Gwynedd, where jobs are in short supply, wages low and the economy weak, this will be a lifesaver. This will bring good, reasonably well-paid employment to hundreds of people who might otherwise have struggled to get anything at all.

It's rather sad that such economic regeneration has to be built on the back of criminality, and the need to lock our fellow citizens up for their misdeeds.

But that's an inevitability, even in a rural, law-abiding, low-crime region such as North Wales. At least in future, prisoners will be catered for locally, and in a Welsh-speaking environment.

That's good news, too, for their families who will not - and should not - have to trek all the way to the 25 prisons scattered across England where prisoners from North Wales are currently held - some as far afield as Durham and Kent.

It's difficult to see much of a downside to the Ministry of Justice's announcement, which has been a long time coming.

Let's just hope now the decision's finally been made, construction can start as soon as practically possible.