Belgium’s federal government plans to create 1,300 additional prison places by the end of the current parliamentary term in an effort to ease chronic overcrowding, Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden said.
In an interview with Het Belang van Limburg published on Saturday, Verlinden said the planned increase would bring prison capacity to what she described as a balanced level compared with other countries.
Belgium’s prisons currently have about 11,000 places for roughly 13,000 inmates, leaving the system significantly overstretched.
The extra capacity is intended to reduce that pressure. It will be created through new prison construction, as well as through places in some detention and transition houses and modular units installed near existing prisons.
Verlinden said, however, that building more prisons was not a structural answer to overcrowding.
“We have more prison places today than ever before, yet overcrowding is also at record levels,” she said. “There is clearly a net-widening effect. I am convinced that if we built six new prisons tomorrow, they would already be full the day after.”
The minister said she therefore also wants greater use of alternative sentences and a strengthening of prison staffing.
