2023-09-24 04:29:00
Prison staff across the country will go on strike this Sunday at 10 p.m., for 48 hours, to denounce the “inhumane” detention and working conditions that reign there. Prison overcrowding, lack of staff and a Minister of Justice “who stubbornly” wants to apply short prison sentences at all costs, the observation drawn up by the unions is clear.
If it is always difficult to estimate participation in a strike movement, recognizes Claudine Coupienne, permanent secretary at the CSC Public Services, the action should be “well followed, as the problems are recurring”. “The FPS Justice has been underbudgeted for decades”recalls from the outset the representative of the Christian union.
“The minister persists in wanting to put in prison people sentenced to sentences of between 0 and 3 years, but there is no room! People sleep on the ground because trios are put in cells intended for n ‘welcome only one person.’
“The political vision of our minister” by carrying out short sentences, “It’s ‘putting an end to impunity'”, agrees Grégory Wallez, federal secretary at the CGSP. However, this promise went hand in hand with that of opening around fifteen detention centers, to accommodate around 600 new detainees, he adds. “Currently, there are only three in operation: two in Flanders and one in Brussels.”
Belgium also uses “abusively to preventive detention, which is also counterproductive”, adds Ms. Coupienne. Result: “an overpopulation of 115 to 120% per prison establishment, i.e. 1,500 missing places”counts his socialist colleague.
However, creating new places “has never been the right decision to fight once morest overpopulation”, continues Grégory Wallez. “In Belgium, the more buildings there are, the more prisoners there are.”
The only short-term solution that Claudine Coupienne sees to deal with prison overcrowding is for Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD) to reverse his latest decisions. However, she does not believe it, nine months before the elections. “The major problem is that it reassures the electorate that we put people in prison, far from the cities, as if these people were no longer part of society. However, in prison, the sentence is the deprivation of liberty, not that of rights and human contacts, nor of hygiene”recalls Claudine Coupienne, emphasizing that “if we treat inmates badly in prison, they come out worse than they went in”.
Other, more creative solutions are also possible according to Mr. Wallez. “During Covid, some detainees were sent back to serve their sentences at home. But, even when they scrupulously respected the conditions imposed on them in this context, they were subsequently reincarcerated under the pretext that the health crisis was over. minister does not worry: he will have his health crisis”mocks the union representative, in the face of epidemics of bedbugs, fungi and other infections circulating in prison and while inmates can no longer take a daily shower due to overcrowding.
The mega-prison of Haren, a penitentiary village with 1,190 places inaugurated with great fanfare just a year ago, had to respond to these challenges, with the triple objective of “remove prison overcrowding by 2030, improve detention conditions and reduce the recidivism rate”reported at the time to Mathieu Michel, Secretary of State in charge of the Buildings Authority.
“Today, only 850 places are occupied because we lack staff”, mocks Claudine Coupienne. His colleague from the CGSP says nothing else: “Haren cannot train enough personnel to open all the buildings making up this prison.”
“Haren, it’s a disaster: inmates poisoned following a fire in a cell because the smoke extractors were placed too far away, badges mistakenly giving access to certain premises – thus threatening security procedures -, bins of shower mounted upside down… But the problems are being kept quiet because the government wants to present it as the flagship of Belgian prisons.”deplores the representative of the Christian union.
If prison overcrowding primarily affects prisoners, it affects the work of prison staff. The unions thus denounce the increase in the workload and the insecurity which is taking hold in prison establishments. Generally, “the working conditions are so bad that it is not for nothing that it is no longer possible to recruit new agents. It is the snake biting its own tail”, concludes Claudine Coupienne.
Faced with this grim picture, prison officers will therefore sit back and do nothing for two days. A minimum service will apply, the conditions of which vary depending in particular on the size and activities of each establishment.
Strike pickets will be organized on Monday, notably in Tournai, Namur and Lantin.
A meeting with Vincent Van Quickenborne was scheduled for Wednesday at 2:15 p.m. but the meeting was canceled, according to the CGSP.
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