2023-04-29 13:11:44
The prison administration begins to empty the prison of Saint-Gilles, in the Brussels region. From this Monday, May 1, there will be no new prisoners in this old, unsanitary prison. Then, hundred by hundred, until the end of the summer, the detainees of St-Gilles will be transferred to the brand new penitentiary center of Haren.
Not all of them, actually. Because of the 850 detainees in Saint-Gilles today, some will have to extend. Those staying in the psychiatric wing will only move in the fall, if all goes well, for lack of sufficient staff in Haren. And above all, a category of prisoners is not sure to leave the dilapidated establishment. Or at least not anytime soon. Convicts without residence permits will not be transferred until the end of 2024, “at least“, according to the expression of the spokesperson for the prison administration. , in addition to the new Brussels prison, “a capacity for additional places”.
“Adapted diet”
Why them? “The advantage of any specific target group is to be able to develop a range of services and assistance as well as a plan tailored to that group“, explained in September the Minister of Justice in the Chamber, while he was questioned by a deputy. At that time, the decision had not yet been taken – or at least formalized -, but Vincent Van Quickenborn defended the idea of a practical aspect, which the prison administration confirms today, for example for contacts with the foreigners office, she says.
But for the League of Human Rights and the Belgian section of the International Observatory of Prisons, this decision rather reflects a tendency to consider these prisoners as “second class prisoners”. “These are two particularly vulnerable categories of detainees. We have on the one hand people who suffer from serious mental illnesses and on the other hand we have foreigners without residence permits. In both cases, these are people who have enormous needs, in terms of medical care and in terms of reintegration. However, we have the impression that the administration will under-invest in these people and abandon them – so to speak – in premises considered dilapidated for the other detainees”, commented Manuel Lambert, legal adviser to the League of Human Rights.
We have the impression that the administration will under-invest these people and abandon them
With regard to foreign detainees without a residence permit, the League fears that when the Minister speaks of an “adapted regime”, it is in fact a matter of a “reduced” regime. “We believe that the administration assumes that they are inmates with fewer needs than others. They have no family. They are isolated. They have fewer social contacts. Fewer contacts with reintegration services because their residence permit prevents them from having a long-term future in Belgium. So we assume that there will be fewer staffing needs. So somewhere we can abandon them in these premises with less staff. This is a major problem for us“.
“It’s really a kind of double standard“, also comments Agathe De Brouwer, lawyer at the Brussels Bar and member of the International Observatory of Prisons. “On the one hand, we have the classic prisoners – foreigners in order to stay and Belgians – who will be transferred to Haren prison presented as the model prison even if that remains debatable but that is another subject. And then there are foreign detainees without right of residence. They can stay in undignified conditions of detention and that does not seem to be considered problematic by the prison administration.“.
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