As Expected, Pandemic Lockdown Affected Crime Rates

The Belize Crime Observatory has released data from the years 2020 and most of 2021. Project Coordinator, Adele Ramos, appeared on Open Your Eyes this morning. She said as expected, the pandemic and its accompanying lockdowns and other restrictions had a strong impact on some categories of crime, causing a dramatic drop in some types. 

Adele Ramos

Adele Ramos, InfoSegura Belize, Project Coordinator & Interim Technical Coordinator, Belize Crime Observatory

“Early on, after we had the lockdown, curfew for example, we saw like robberies, burglaries, those types of things, property crimes going way down. Right? Of course, it was expected. And also it was expected that with the relaxation of measures you would then see an increase in certain categories of crime and so knowing that, our policy makers in law enforcement could be proactive because you could predict certain things. So the data is important in that regard where we saw for example in Southern Belize for the earlier part of 2020-21, property crimes being more of a concern than they were previously and so you saw where there was that response from law enforcement to be proactive, right? When it came, for example, to domestic violence. Globally, it was said to be a pandemic within a pandemic. Again there were proactive measures. We saw where a new hotline was launched where people could report not just if you are in the situation, but if you know of somebody in the situation you could also assist. And so, all of these things together, helped to mitigate what we expected and what could have really been a much worse situation.”