The unions that represent the country’s prison staff have announced a 24-hour strike starting at on Thursday 14 March 14. There has long been discontent among prison staff about overcrowding in Belgium’s prisons. The unions say that overcrowding has led to an increase in violence against prison officers.
Last weekend, staff at Antwerp and Hasselt Prisons downed tools. Since then, they have been refusing to admit any new prisoners. In the meantime, other Flemish prisons also decided not to accept new inmates in protest at the overcrowding.
Since yesterday (Thursday) 6 of Flanders’ 9 prisons have been admitting new inmates again albeit only from their own judicial district. The prisons at Antwerp, Hasselt (Limburg) and Mechelen (Antwerp province) will decide today (Friday) whether they too will admit new imates again.
According to figures from the Federal Justice Department on 1 March 2024 there were 12,316 inmates in prisons that have a combined capacity for 10,743 prisoners. Despite extra capacity having been created during the past year around 250 inmates were still sleeping on matrasses on the floor at the start of this month.
The unions are calling for action to be taken to reduce the number of prisoners to 10,700. They say that this can be done by the increased use of electronic tagging and by creating more capacity in regular psychiatric care to free up space in forensic care institution where people that have been sectioned can receive the care they need.
A proposal to extend penitentiary leave is seen as insufficient to resolve the current issue of overcrowding. Moreover, it creates an additional workload for staff. The proposal that had been put forward by the Justice Department was rejected almost unanimously by prison staff and a 24-hour strike has been called in all Belgian prisons from 10pm next Thursday.