A New Prison Information Management System is Launched
There are approximately one thousand, two hundred and sixty persons at the Belize Central Prison – some serving sentencing while others are on remand. For decades, the facility is being managed by the Kolbe Foundation, but data collection and processing of the inmates were being done manually – that is until today, as a new prison information management system is being launched. The web-based program digitizes the processes, making the management and services of inmates more efficient. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
The Ministry of Home Affairs, in partnership with UNDP, Infosegura and USAID, launched the Prison Information Management System today. Valued at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars, the new system, inclusive of hardware and software, will digitize paper-based information to web base and will enable users to better meet the prison’s requirements and promote accountability within the criminal justice system.
Kareem Musa
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
“This has been a priority of our administration since taking office and it is not just in relation to our prison systems. Also at forensics and of course, as you know, the police department has the SIMS. And so this is an extremely important tool that we find not just for data capturing and gathering but also to help out the prison department, the staff and management in terms of data-driven decision making and certainly having one consolidated portal is excellent in terms of drawing for any information that you might need at any given time.”
Virgilio Murillo
Virgilio Murillo, C.E.O., Kolbe Foundation
“Before this program came on stream, we were capturing a lot of data; the prison has a substantial amount of data over the years. But they were all captured manually, using excel spreadsheets. I have a very good grasp of the excel program so I do a lot of templates with formulas and those types of things so that it tabulates automatically. But even though you have those templates, it is still painstaking; it is a painstaking way of doing business. So this program should be able to consolidate all the data that we have been capturing over the years in different templates, under one umbrella, if you want to put it that way.”
PIMS, for short, is a comprehensive application that covers every aspect of the inmates when in prison, as well as when they re-enter society, ensuring that they are attending meetings and track their whereabouts. It can be used in an offline environment, has secure backup/archiving features, and the ability to export all data in the system in structured formats, including data for analysis in other apps.
Virgilio Murillo
“Rather than having templates for different aspects of prison management, we will have everything under that one software or in that one program where can go and literally get a snapshot on the prison on any particular day and time just with the click of a button.”
So who will have access to the information?
Virgilio Murillo
“As far as I am aware, we’ll be sharing data with the judiciary, the police and the Belize Crime Observatory, if my memory serves me well. I want to think that the Forensics Department will also be able to access our data. And how it will improve the human rights of these inmates? I can safely say that we will be more efficient in managing their court dates, we will be more efficient in being able to come up with the level of programming that they will be needed as prisoners. Like Mister Hower had presented in his presentation, when a prisoner comes to prison, we do an inmate classification and risk and needs assessment where you kinda figure out what is the risk posed by that prisoner – whether it is escape, whether it’s violence or disruptive behaviour. And then you look at their needs – you might have people with diabetes, hypertension, HIV positive, those kinds of things – so you have to attend to these needs. Of course, we cannot forget the needs for their drug treatment, their addiction treatment – whether it is drugs or alcohol of what have you.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
