$96,000 IN ICT Equipment to CRD’s Adult Probation Unit

Today, the Community Rehabilitation Department received a generous donation of ninety-five thousand dollars’ worth of information and communication technology equipment. This donation was made under the PACE Justice Project, funded by the European Union in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program. So, what’s all this ICT equipment for? The department is launching an adult probation unit that offers alternative sentencing for low-risk and first-time offenders. We got more details from the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Human Development.

 

Adele Catzim-Sanchez, C.E.O., Ministry of Human Development

“The importance of today is that the ICT equipment is part of a larger project. It really reflects the need for us to improve the support services we provide for low-risk offenders. It is part of a project we call PACE Justice and it is a regional project in the Caribbean and Belize was selected as one of the countries to participate in the project and the objectives are to provide legal education to people so that they can better navigate the system, to reduce the backlog of cases that goes through the court and to ensure that first time offenders have community and rehabilitative service so that they don’t reoffend and at the same time not clog up the justice system by putting people or incarcerating people in prison. It will be for CRD. We will be hiring new people, new community rehabilitation officers to work in the adult probation unit. So we are in the process of setting up that unit. This equipment will help us to make sure we can manage our client database, make sure that we can communicate better with all our partners, including the court, the justice system and the community development organizations, cause we will need community participation to make sure this works well. If we are doing probation we will need to monitor where our clients are. If we are doing restorative justice we will need to ensure our young people can do community service instead of going to jail or Wagner’s Facility.”