Deportees: according to law enforcement officials, they are responsible for many of the crime sin Belize but now the signing of a new treaty could put a whole new spin on the phenomenon. Yesterday Cabinet authorized Foreign Affairs Minister Godfrey Smith to sign the Inter-American Convention on serving criminal sentences abroad. Under the treaty Belizeans serving sentences in the U.S., Canada, and Panama will be given an opportunity to serve their sentences at home. Foreign Affairs Minister Smith explains how it will work.
Godfrey Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"If we have a Belizean serving time, for instance in the Unite States or in Panama or any member country of the OAS, and that person is interested in doing his time in Belize then the convention allows for that to happen. From time to time around embassies get requests from families of Belizeans who are serving time abroad who say 'it's a hard time for us to visit our relative who is in prison, is it possible for us to have the person do the time in Belize.'"
Keith Swift,
Is this just a mechanism for Belizean prisoners to be dumped on us?
Godfrey Smith,
"That's absolutely an incorrect perception for these reasons. The United States doesn't need a treaty to send deportees, as they are called, to Belize and in fact throughout the entire Caribbean. It's a big problem so they do it in any event. What this treaty allows to happen is that in instances when we know they want to deport people, if they are very serious criminals, if we don't have a Convention or an agreement like this, then when these people come back to Belize they might have portions of their sentence they have not served and they are free to roam the streets of Belize. So this at least gives us the latitude, from here on once we sign the agreement for serious criminals who have been deported from the US to finish sentences in Belize. It gives us a bit better control."
So far Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela have signed on.
