Saint-Gilles prison to stay open, citing capacity needs

Saint-Gilles prison will be kept open into next year, despite concerns about its poor conditions as the second-oldest jail in Belgium.

“The capacity we have in Saint-Gilles is desperately needed to house Brussels detainees,” Kathleen Van De Vijver, spokeswoman for the Belgian prison system, told Bruzz.

The 140-year-old jail was supposed to close at the end of this year, but overcrowding in Belgian prisons remains a persistent problem, even after the opening of the Haren prison complex, which has already reached capacity (1,116 inmates out of a total capacity of 1,035) after just two years. Saint-Gilles currently holds 496 prisoners, with a maximum capacity of 515.

In Europe, only Cyprus, France and Romania have higher overcrowding rates than Belgium, according to a recent report.

Earlier this year, a report by the prison's monitoring committee revealed that inmates at Saint-Gilles are plagued by scabies and that pigeon droppings on window sills are causing disease.

“It is and remains an outdated building, and the more people you place together in a small space, the greater the risk of infectious diseases,” said Stijn Van Den Abeele, regional president of the VSOA union for public service staff.

Yet despite the current health concerns and overcrowding situation, improvements have been made.

“A maximum of two prisoners per cell now reside across three wings,” Van Den Abeele said.

“That’s still far from ideal and not in line with European directives, but at least the situation is less unpleasant than when Haren had fewer places and Saint-Gilles housed some 800 detainees.”

The VSOA therefore welcomed the delay of the closure, although it said it was “unfortunate that staff do not have clarity on the deadline”.

Laurent Lardinois, regional secretary of the CGSP Brussels union, was not optimistic about a quick solution to overcrowding.

“I think we're in for several more years,” said Lardinois.

“They're not going to solve the problem of overcrowding in the next few months or years. So I think that Saint-Gilles prison will remain open.”

Complicating the prison capacity situation in Belgium is the ongoing shortage of staff.

While Haren prison director Jurgen Van Poecke told De Standaard that the opening of the new jail was accompanied by a big wave of new staff, “a lot of inexperienced people joined at all levels” and Van De Vijver confirmed that “staff are still needed”.

Outgoing justice minister Paul Van Tigchelt (Open VLD) said that Saint-Gilles will remain open while they “first focus on sufficient and trained staff in the Brussels prisons”.

The justice ministry said the further future of Saint-Gilles prison will be decided by the next federal government.

Denis Bosquet, a lawyer at the Brussels bar and member of Avocat.be's criminal law committee, told RTBF that Belgium is overdue for a new prison policy.

“Every prison that is opened will be filled – it's a criminological phenomenon that's been known since the dawn of time, so there's absolutely no point in trying to build and build and build,” Bosquet said.

“It's time to think about turning off the inlet tap and turning on the outlet tap, and not the other way round. Otherwise things will explode, because the first consequence of overcrowding is violence, and the second is repeat offending. The third consequence is a lack of social reintegration. And so we go from failure to failure.”

Nationwide, Belgium has more prisoners today than ever before - 12,500 inmates for 11,000 available places.