It mostly slipped under the media radar, but on Monday the Kolbe Foundation opened an ambitious crime summit. Kolbe has teamed up with the Institute for Justice in Decatur Georgia for the summit. CEO of the Kolbe’s Belize Central Prison Marlon Skeen says its all about sharing ideas and experiences to avoid pitfalls.
Marlon Skeen, CEO – Kolbe Foundation
“The purpose is to raise the local standard, to share experiences, to see and to hear from the various participants, the presenters, what is happening in other countries and to take the good things from them and of course throw the bad aside. But pretty much what we have growing in Belize right when it comes to crime and all these bad things that you hear about, we are not unique in the world, there’s other countries who have been through the exact same thing. So pretty much if we can share that experience from them, they can assist us tremendously in not falling into the same pitfalls along the way. So it is a specific set of recommendations that we want to come out of this thing and definite measures and ideas that we could try to implement if possible and to get going.”
The sessions deal with scenes of crimes, domestic violence, juvenile crimes and human traffic amongst other issues. The keynote speaker at the opening was the Prime Minister who gave some broad and circumspect remarks about penal reform.
Rt. Hon. Said Musa, Prime Minister
“If we rely on prisons to reduce the crime rate, which do we decide to lock up or whom do we decide to lock up? If we warehouse them and simply ensure they live in custody, in harsh and unsanitary conditions, are we going to deter this majority from crime when their time is up? Or would this treatment cause this majority of prisoners irrevocably to lose their self-respect? What they need instead as John Woods calls it is tough love which is exactly what I believe the Kolbe Foundation is working on today.”
But recently at Kolbe, we’ve been hearing reports of tough without any kind of love. That’s after the prison population came under a severe crackdown as consequence of the jailhouse murder of Gilroy Wade. Wade was shot in the head with a pistol smuggled into the prison and fitted with a homemade silencer. Skeen conceded that it could happen again.
Jules Vasquez,
Are you concerned that this incident at the prison where a weapon was smuggled in might be a part of a trend or something that may continue if one was smuggled in another can be smuggled in?
Marlon Skeen,
“Jules it’s never far away and we all know that criminals tend to mimic crimes; when something happens and they saw that it happened and they got away with it or the repercussions were minimal, believe you me somebody else will try it.”
Skeen says that there is evidence that Gilroy Wade’s killer was acting on instructions – in other words – he was carrying out a hit.
