Reports criticise state of Belgian prisons

Belgian prisons are no better than warehouses for human beings, with continuing problems including overcrowding, overworked guards and poor facilities, according to a stinging report by the Central Advisory Council for Prisons issued last week.

Belgium's prisons (pictured, Saint-Gilles in Brussels) have room for 9,400 prisoners, but the actual prison population is almost 12,000. According to the report, the government has a plan for building new prisons – four new prisons are planned or under construction -- but the need to maintain security in an overcrowded system has had a negative effect on the human rights of those detained.

“The prisons have become warehouses, while politicians appear not to realise the risks and damages such a policy brings,” the report says. “The situation in Lantin, as in other prisons, is disturbing with regard to hygiene, overcrowding, lack of staff and morality.”

When industrial action by guards takes place, the report says, prisoners' rights are reduced even further. The report contains stories of sheets washed only twice a year; prisoners deprived of visits from lawyers and family; lack of shower or toilet facilities; and drugs and special-diet meals wrongly administered.

Hans Claus, director of the prison in Oudenaarde in East Flanders, meanwhile made a radical proposal to ease the situation: build two prisons in every municipality to house ten prisoners each. Large prisons should make way for small detention houses. Living conditions and the chance of reintegration into society would be improved, Claus argues, while the cost would be reduced.

Meanwhile the UN Commission on Torture issued its own report on Friday criticising the Belgian system in similar terms, and calling for a better separation of convicts and those on remand, and of adults and minors. The commission also called specifically for more information from the government on the case of Jonathan Jacob, the 26-year-old man who died in a police cell in January 2010 after being restrained by police.  “We have nothing to say about what took place in the police cell, because the enquiry is still going on,” the commission said. “But we do want to know why it has taken so long before the outcome of the investigation is known.”