Belgium (The Brussels Morning newspaper): Belgian prisons have limited employees, too many people, and insufficient good services. When there are strikes, things get even worse, and prisoners’ rights and dignity are not respected. Political leaders need to make changes quickly in prisons to fix these problems.
A report made by Resources talked extensively about the prisoners’ services during strikes. The Council indicated that some prisons do not have sufficient officers for basic services, even at normal times. A rule was made on March 23, 2019, to set up the basic services offered in jail. This law allows the authorities to summon staff if the strike lasts more than 48 hours.
What urgent reforms are needed for Belgian prisons?
Last year, they checked out three prisons on strike (Merksplas, Saint-Gilles, and Nivelles in September). They found that the prisoners’ health, both body and mind, suffered because most were stuck in their cells all day. In 2023, the cops were putting more people in jail. The report found that the number of prisoners kept increasing after the pandemic, reaching a peak in March 2024 with 12,399 prisoners. When they let some prisoners leave because the jail was too full, only 29 fewer prisoners were left in the cell. Because last year was overfilled by approximately 13% more prisoners than it should have been, many prisoners had to sleep on the floor with only a mattress in 2023. They discovered 216 of them sleeping that way back in December. Strikes are starting to get tough to handle because the prisons are so populated, CCS said. Marc Nève, the president of the Council, urgently said the prisons need major improvements. He warned, “Political leaders must act fast because doing nothing will result in big problems.
