Politicians in Belgium are clashing over how to solve the country’s prison overcrowding crisis, with over 13,000 inmates—many of them foreign nationals—being kept in a system that holds an official capacity of 11,000.
The right-wing Vlaams Belang party said that a record 672 people slept on the floor one night earlier this month, describing the situation as a “ticking time bomb.” Party MP Marijke Dillen asked:
How many more of these cries for help does the [Bart] De Wever government need? Or are they really waiting for people to die first?
Earlier this year, Le Soirreported that more than 43% of the country’s prison inmates were foreign nationals, and that 31% lacked residence rights altogether.
In response to such figures, Dillen called on Belgium’s establishment leaders to address the “root cause” of overcrowding:
Criminal foreigners must serve their sentences in their country of origin. More than 40% of inmates do not have Belgian nationality, and 75% of them are illegal. This way, sufficient capacity can be created very quickly in Belgian prisons.
Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) and Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt (N-VA) visited Albania and Kosovo in October to examine the idea of building a prison to hold foreign convicts there. But, as with almost all sensible projects, progress is slow, if at all existent.
Prime Minister De Wever is also holding his last cabinet meeting of the year on Tuesday, where the issue is bound to come up. CD&V Chairman Sammy Mahdi expressed “hope that we learn to cross the line together.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
