Belize’s First Crime Observatory Founded
George Lovell
This morning, the Ministry of Home Affairs formally introduced the Belize Crime Observatory, an information management system which aims to strengthen analysis of crime and violence data in order to improve public security in the region. Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Retired Colonel George Lovell speaks on the concept of the observatory and how it all came to fruition.
Ret. Col. George Lovell, C.E.O., Home Affairs
“This is an idea that is basically the brainchild of Ambassador Oliver del Cid when he was the Deputy National Security Coordinator. He and I sat down and we looked at the whole landscape of crime data and we observed that it was basically housed in a number of agencies and departments that are not necessarily a part of the everyday national security apparatus. We sat down and we decided that that sort of arrangement made it a bit challenging for decision makers, for policy makers, for academia, for students to get the kind of information in a one stop-one shop fashion. We decided that for that to happen we need to have a national repository or observatory or depository, as sometimes it’s referred to. They use all these buzzwords, and as a result we decided to partner with a number of agencies. The multi-dimensional security sector, a department of the OAS was kind enough to pay for a consultant to be put together precisely what we need to do and how we need to go about doing it. We have gone from Police and Public Safety to National Security to Home Affairs and Immigration and we are now Finance and Home Affairs and today it is the launching of that observatory that has not just been something that we created six years ago but an observatory that went through a whole process of engagement and working with a number of other agencies to include UNDP, InfoSegura… and a number of other partners that have partnered with us, including the observatory from the Dominican Republic.”
The Belize Crime Observatory falls under the mandate of the National Security Council Secretariat.
