He told us that social intervention is required if Belize is to avoid falling into the kind of crime crisis that has gripped his country.

Dr. Herbert Gayle, Violence Anthropologist
"So the study is about reducing violence but it is not about attacking people who are violent, it is about creating the kind of setting that allows violence as a by-product to be reduced. The pool from which we draw gang members, the pool from which we are going to draw persons who are going to commit suicide is just too much. It means therefore that what is mandatory is not something we have a second say or second guessing around, is that the country has to have some sort of a splintered, or even the base line - notice I am not asking for too much - for a welfare service. Violence is a by-product of social ills, the idea therefore is to remove or reduce the social ills and the violence themselves will go down. It means that this kind of study is completely against - and let me put it in the American way - big balls policing, where everybody is - the bigger the gun they have in their hands, the more macho. The organization of violence here is not yet mature and the point is that if we arrest this problem now we can avoid the excitement of Colombia, South Africa, Jamaica, Venezuela, we can avoid those. But what is the next generation going to be? Are we going to be a country with 200 murders? If we hit 200 murders, that's what its call social suicide. Once Belize hits that kind of murder rate you are talking about a homicide rate of over 60 which will be equivalent to Jamaica. It's a crossroad time and it's the best time to deal with a problem when you are at the cross roads, you can actually take the road not taken. "

You can see the full report through a link at 7newsbelize.com…
http://issuu.com/7newsbelize/docs/male_social_participation_and_violence_in_urban_be