Some 281 people sleep on mattresses placed on the ground in Belgian prisons, a record figure, according to the latest penitentiary population figures. A total of 13,062 people are held, for a theoretical capacity of 11,040.
This news follows the recent adoption in the House of the Emergency Bill of the Minister of Justice Annelies Verlinden, which aims to fight in the short term against prison overcrowding. The Minister had warned that it was difficult to estimate the exact consequences of this text in terms of “gain” of places, but hoped to be able to absorb by the end of 2026 the waiting list of people sentenced to short sentences (maximum 3 years) but whose execution is suspended for lack of space. More than 3,500 people are on this “list”.
Friday, the daily newspaper Le Soir unveiled another section of the Minister’s projects, more structural: the increase in the number of places in prison, via modular units (prefabricated), the maintenance of prisons supposed to close their doors (whose emblematic example is Saint-Gilles prison), and capacity increases, for example in Haren. The Federal also pursues its policy of opening houses, which has been late. These are places of detention on much smaller scale, a few dozen places per house. And it has already been established for years (from the Masterplan Prisons III, from 2016) that new prisons must come out of the ground in Vresse-sur-Semois and Bourg-Leopold. Taking into account all of this, the Minister aims at 1,105 places in addition to the end of 2027, and another 932 more on the 1920s-29-30.
Detainees who are currently sleeping on the ground are the most numerous in Antwerp prison, where they are 69.
