Belgium: diverging pathways

Helene De Vos. I think there are several factors contributing to this. On the one hand, this is related to the urgent issue of overcrowding and the perceived need to do something about it. While building large-scale prisons and new buildings, the administration is also building detention houses as it is much faster.

On the other hand, I think that policymakers have different views on the direction that should be taken. Some believe that new large-scale and modern prisons can offer better detention conditions. While others really believe in detention and transition houses and see their value.

An-Sofie Vanhouche. Even after detention houses were included in the policy, new big prisons were constructed, such as the one in Antwerp. This is because it takes long before you can start using them. For example, Haren was announced in 2008, only opened now and is not fully occupied yet.

HDV. It’s a quite complex policy, which in practice leads to an odd situation. In the 1990s, non-custodial measures, such as electronic monitoring and other alternatives were introduced to try and solve the overcrowding. The prison population remained similar while the number of non-custodial measures went up, which resulted in having more people in the justice system overall.

Today, we see the same trend of implementing new measures in the hope that it will resolve overcrowding. Instead, it ends up being an expansionist policy: more prisoners end up being put under these measures.

ASV. In the past, Belgium tried to reduce overcrowding by limiting the number of people who would be sent to prison. Before, if you had a sentence or a total of sentences below three years, you wouldn’t go to prison. You would be subjected to electronic monitoring instead. A new legislation has passed and now, if you are sentenced from six months to three years of prison, you must serve the sentence, either in a detention house or an ordinary prison facility. People that were outside with electronic monitoring are suddenly being placed in detention. Instead of being an alternative to those already serving, detention houses are now used to resolve a capacity problem of new people coming in.

ASV. In Haren, it’s not hard to improve the material conditions of detention if you compare it with the old Brussels buildings. The conditions in the old prisons like Saint-Gilles and Forest are really bad. For example, Forest didn’t have a toilet in every cell. So they had an open-door regime to allow people the sanitary facilities in the wings. Forest re-opened as a detention house and was a bit renovated, but Saint-Gilles is really old, its material conditions are really bad but is still open. There is a TikTok video circulating from a prisoner filming rats running around in the facility. This really highlights how bad the situation is.

As for the detention houses, Kortrijk was opened in September 2022. There is a household atmosphere with kitchens and outside space. The material conditions are good. It used to be a house for the elderly, so there are big comfortable rooms. When we visited the facility a few months ago, it was not too noisy nor too busy. It was not running to its full capacity and there were still a lot of non-allocated places.

HDV. Kortrijk allows to really operate in a small scale. I heard they have discussed the house rules with the residents when they opened, so that they make sense to everyone. That’s not something you could do in a large-scale prison. It has much more opportunities to really come closer to the normal life outside prison. The goal is to normalise life in these facilities and that can be done thanks to the closeness of the community around. You can have a completely different climate, interactions or relationships between staff and incarcerated people with 20 and perhaps even 60 people. We don’t know how this will evolve when it reaches full capacity, but it is working really well for now.

ASV. When we visited the detention house in Kortrijk during the day, many people were outside, working for example. This is also starting to be implemented in big prisons, where they try to install small-scale principles including more autonomy and more interaction in a large-scale context. In Haren for instance, they aim to introduce a system with badges so that people can move around more freely.

HDV. The functioning of a small-scale facility can have a real impact on prison staff and how they work. One of the prison officers who came to work in Kortrijk detention house came from a large-scale prison. He asked for a transfer because it was closer to his home, but he was rather sceptical at first. He changed his mind completely when he started working at the detention house. He really started to believe in small-scale detention because he felt the difference.

In regard to the selection procedure, I believe that, in Kortrijk, half of the staff is made up of experienced prison officers coming from other prisons. But they also wanted to hire new people with other backgrounds, like social work or criminology, in order to create diversity in the prison culture.

ASV. They are now differentiating two types of officers in ordinary prisons: “detention counsellors” and “security officers”. The role of counsellors is more than just opening and closing doors. It’s about interacting with imprisoned persons, asking them how they feel, if they want to take part in activities and so on. It will take time before it is fully implemented because the staff need to be trained. It can also create new difficulties, because you need sufficient people in both groups to have enough people on the ground. It is not an easy task considering staff shortages.

HDV. Besides the prison staff, it is also important to raise awareness among judges. They have a very important role to play and they are not always aware of their impact on the situation.

ASV. The Judicial Training Institute (JTI) organised an immersion weekend for judges in Haren prison before it opened. We conducted a study on the judges’ experiences. The judges said it created awareness and gave them a sense of what it is to be imprisoned. After experiencing Haren, someone also said he would not mind sending people there as it is not as overcrowded as Antwerp. They also felt like they knew that in Haren, people’s rights would not be as violated as somewhere else. We are currently preparing a questionnaire for judges in Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels, to understand their perception on the execution of the sentences of less than three years.

HDV. I agree that it is important to raise awareness among judges. It doesn’t make sense to lock people up for so many years in large and overcrowded prison institutions. I think most people working in this area would agree with that. At the same time, however, it doesn’t make sense either that judges let their judgement depend on whether or not the sentence is implemented in an overcrowded prison or in a detention house. It is still about the deprivation of liberty, which is the sentence. Following this logic, it also makes sense to me to properly implement the prison sentences shorter than three years. If judges don’t want people to be sent to prison, and to be affected by its harmful effects, they should consider non-custodial measures.