$95,000 worth of Information and Communication Technology was today donated to the Community Rehabilitation Department as a part of the PACE Justice Project, which is funded by the EU and implemented by UNDP.
This ICT equipment will be used to help reduce the backlog in the justice system by creating an adult probation unit. We learned more at the handing over ceremony today.
Adele Catzim Sanchez, CEO, Ministry of Human Dev.
"The ICT equipment is part of a larger project. It really reflects the need for us to improve the support services that we provide to low risk offenders. It's part of a project that is called Pace Justice and it's a regional project in the Caribbean and Belize was selected to be one of the countries to participate in the project and the objectives are to provide education, legal education to people so that they could navigate or better navigate the legal system. It's to reduce the backlog of cases that go through the courts and to ensure that lowest offenders have community and rehabilitative services so they don't reoffend but at the same time not clog up the justice system by incarcerating people in prison."
"We are looking at between 32 and 34 probation or new officers to come on board with us and we've gotten approval from Cabinet but we are to stagger the hiring over a four year period so we'll start out with maybe 8 to 10 officers including the probation officers and coordinators to make sure that everything functions well. We'll have offices across the country as we do currently but the offices will be separate from the offices we have now and that is to ensure that people who are on adult probation don't necessarily intermingle with the other populations we serve."
Michael Lund, Deputy Resident Rep., UNDP Belize
"Belize is really spearheading and setting the pace for the rest of the countries, Belize is really the one that is modernizing and improving the most out of everybody so we're proud to be a part of the effort."
"One of the efforts to reduce the backlog was of course the adult alternative centers act of last year and operationalizing that is creating this unit which is the adult probational unit that is being created and this IT unit that we're handing over is helping to operationalize that unit so you're able to move away from writing papers, shuffling papers, but digitalizing your work and moving much more efficient so it's an efficient but it's also reducing the backlogs by not sending low risk first time offenders all the way through the court system into overcrowded and expensive prison but handling much earlier and up front so it doesn't even become a case."
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