New prison openings and measures to combat prison overcrowding are yet to bear fruit in Belgium, as they continue to be among the most overcrowded in Europe.
The chronic lack of capacity in Belgian prisons has resulted in inhumane conditions, including inmates sleeping on cell floors, and is damaging prisoners' overall rehabilitation, as there are too few staff to provide them with the services to which they are entitled, a report revealed last year.
On Tuesday, the Council of Europe published statistics on Europe's prison population between January 2021 and January 2022. The statistics showed that the end of lockdown measures to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic produced a rebound effect in the incarceration rates in many European countries, including Belgium.
"The median incarceration rate grew by 2.3% in countries exceeding one million inhabitants; in Belgium, the incarceration rate grew by 4.7%," the report read.
Down to drugs
In Belgium, 11,326 prisoners are being held in a system with capacity for just 9,752 inmates. This was reflected in the report, which showed that there are 115 inmates per 100 places. Belgium far surpassed the benchmark indicator of severe overcrowding (105 inmates per 100 places), falling well above the European average of 91.6 prisoners per 100 places.
The Belgian Prison Service confirmed the upward trend in the prison population, but explained that it is partly due to some sentences that were postponed during the pandemic to "control the health situation in prisons" now being executed.
Prison overcrowding could also be explained by the high number of convictions and people in pre-trial detention following the SKY ECC drug trafficking operation. "But this is on top of the chronic overcrowding that our prisons have suffered from for decades," spokesperson Kathleen Van De Vijver told Belga News Agency.
This is also reflected in the fact that almost half of the prisoners in the country (51%) are behind bars because of drug-related offences. Belgium is consequently at the top of this list, ahead of Latvia (43%) and Azerbaijan (37%) and well above the European average (19%).
Breaking the cycle?
Belgium has implemented a range of measures to combat overcrowding, including a temporary scheme to reduce prisoners' sentences. The scheme was put in place during the pandemic and has been extended until September 2023.
New prison facilities will also be created to alleviate the crisis in the long-term. It is hoped the recent opening of prisons in Haren and Dendermonde and the reopening of the Ypres prison should, in time, help to keep overcrowding under control.
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The Federal Government also announced in March that four new prisons will open in the country by 2030, including one in Antwerp and three in Wallonia, while four more existing prisons will see their capacity increased.
However, the opening of the prison in Haren, hailed as the prison of the future, was quickly overshadowed by criticism of its inhumane conditions. Sceptics argued that the continuing problem cannot be tackled by simply building new prisons but should instead focus on social solutions curbing crime at its core.
