The Belize Crime Observatory is an initiative that started in 2010 by the then Ministry of Police and Public Safety. This initiative continued under the Ministry of National Security and after a series of studies, meetings and partnership engagements, this initiative became a reality. This observatory on crime and violence, would take on the key functions of analyzing data provided by the police and other sources, applying this analysis to policy and program development, implementation, and monitoring. The observatory would also serve as a single unit that integrates technical knowledge about crime and violence issues, data management (conceptual and technological), policy requirements (national and international), and networking with other observatories and data systems (e.g. UNODC, OBSICA). In addition to making crime data available in an organized, regular manner, a key function of the observatory would be to disseminate analysis of this data. It would serve as a single point of contact for all requests on crime data – whether from Belizean stakeholders, other Government of Belize Ministries, project reporting requests, international data tracking, etc. These requests were handled in a case-by-case manner, which caused some delays and duplication.