Kolbe hosts international crime conference

For the next four days, Belize’s criminal justice professionals and their counterparts from the U.S. and the Caribbean are taking part in an International Crime Summit in Belize. The event, held at Old Belize, is the result of close collaboration between the Kolbe Foundation and the Institute for Social Justice in Decatur Georgia. What the participants are discovering is that the problems of criminal behaviour are not confined to any one country.

Father John Stochl, Prison Chaplain, Kolbe Foundation
“I think what we can do is talk it over among ourselves, see what is applicable to Belize, what our resources allow us to do. I mean we have personnel and we’re limited in personnel who are willing to give themselves to this kind of work. I guess we learn from one another and then we can try to put it into—or adopt it and then put it into practice.”

Betty Fuller, International Criminal Justice Foundation
“Kids are impacted the most by crime, so we try to find a way to turn the crime around and show the person who’s committing the crime the impact that they have on their family, as well as the children, as well as the community. So the way we do it is we get involve professionals, we involve the police, we involve the schools, we involve the correctional facilities.”

“I don’t care what country it is, if there is a lack of jobs then the person is gonna continue with that cycle. They go back, they have a stigma from being incarcerated, then they go back in their community, they don’t have jobs, they don’t have housing. It’s the same regardless of whether you’re in the United States of America or Belize or any other country. It’s the same factors that seem to be involved.”

The conference will end on Thursday.