Belize: Reflections on Police Training and Professionalization

Abstract

This article looks to analyze the preparation process the Belizean police force goes through with the objective of training the officers for duty. It also has the purpose of detailing the entrails the officers have to confront in their way up the corporate ladder as they develop into a professional police officer. Seen from a regional objectivity, Belize has been singled out to be in the center of numerous regional and hemispherical security problems; it is facing several of the same security challenges as its neighbors and explains the use of armed forces at the service of the public safety and the necessity to upgrade their law enforcement tactics and practices. The country also participates in many several mutual support instruments designed to assist and receive preparation and instruction from other nation’s police bodies. An example of that international aid came in a report from 2008 entitled Review of the Belize Department written by a Jamaican consultant in which the Police Plan elaborated in 2006 was analyzed and critiqued pointed out the strong and weak points of that project.