Hans Claus. A number of findings led to the creation of Rescaled. We observed that Belgium, the founding country of the project, is within the average in terms of imprisonment practices in Europe, with an incarceration rate of 100 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants; recourse to pre-trial detention is quite significant (33% of prisoners are on remand); prison buildings are in poor state ─more than half of them were built since the 19th century; and recidivism rate is around 60%.
Belgium does not invest enough in the management of its prisons an spends half as much as the Netherlands, for example. We have been reproached on several occasions by Europe for prison overpopulation and the degrading treatment of prisoners.
This can be explained by the fact that Belgium was a Lead State in prison related matters, among other things, in the 19th century. We thought it would always be that way. Over the last 40 years in particular, we can talk about overpopulation and under budgeting.
In 2010, the government decided to increase the capacity of the prison facilities in response to overpopulation. To the surprise of several criminologists, the “new” prisons were replica of the panoptic ones in the 19th century!
Then, the so-called “houses” movement came about, aiming to put forward an alternative model. The concept of “detention house” is the result of two years of cooperative multidisciplinary research englobing criminology, architecture, economy and philosophy. Journalists, researchers and politicians were also involved. The detention house is small, with a maximum capacity of 30 prisoners, and has distinctive security schemes and proposed programmes, right in the heart of society, in the cities, and not away from them.
We are hoping that this new model will replace the old paradigm of traditional imprisonment in prison facilities.