Switching gears now, the Kolbe Foundation with the assistance of several stakeholders, has digitized its Prison records and data.
Together they today launched Kolbe's very first Prison Information Management System with the objective to improve security and access to inmate files and data stored at the prison. Jomarie Lanza has this report.
There are a total of 1,260 inmates serving time at the Belize Central prison. When a prisoner first arrives, his or her information is documented manually and filed away in records among the other hundreds of prisoners.
But what happens when that information is lost? Misplaced? Or an employee needs to access a prisoner's data for reference. The number of hours it would usually take to dig up a prisoner's file is now a thing of the past, because today, The Prison Information Management System, PIMS was launched in an attempt to further secure, track cases and share inmate data with other public sector entities for use.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"This has been a priority of our administration since taking office and it's 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 management and staff and also in terms of data driven decision making and Celerino y of course having one consolidated portal is excellent in terms of drawing for any information that you may need at any given time. And so there are so many different facets as you have heard from the presentation today it covers every single aspect of the inmates not just in prison but when they are released into society in terms or tracking them ensuring that they are attending whatever meetings they are supposed to attend and that sort of thing and it truly is and it definitely consolidates all the information that the prison has gathered manually and digitally but now makes it streamline."
It's something the prison has been lobbying for since 2010 and now thanks to UNDP, USAID and InfoSegura, they've managed to purchase the software that has made this new system fully functional and accessible within the law enforcement apparatus. Not only will they be able to keep track of prison data but it will also enable the personnel at Kolbe to assist inmates in transitioning back into society once their time has been served.
Virgilio Murillo, CEO, Belize Central Prison
"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 I'm not too sure how it will reduce administrative overheads because you will still need personnel to be inputting data. You will still need data clerks and those kinds of things but the beautiful thing about it is that all the data will be consolidated. In other words, rather than having templates for different aspects of present management, we will have everything under that one software or that one program where I can go and literally get a snap shot on the prison on any particular day and time just with the click of a button."
"We were lobbying for this program and I think the last time we got serious in lobbying for it was back in 2010 if my memory serves me well. The people we discussed it with, nothing ever happened about it so we dropped the subject. We always knew that it was a very expensive venture and the prison itself was not in a position to fit the bill because like you heard just a while ago the cost of it is 300,000 Belize dollars that's not a little bit of money to deal with and Prison does not have that kind of finance so you know when we heard that UNDP and info Segura along with USAID wanted to give us the program and the software we jumped on it immediately, and we encourage them to push through with it this time, so we were very happy when we started the process and saw that we got the organization to come up with the software to produce the software."
This information will be shared within the judiciary, the Police, the Belize Crime Observatory and the Forensics department.
