2023-09-25 19:27:00
Seventy-four inmates of Dendermonde prison, in East Flanders, refused to return to the prison after the evening walk and caused trouble this Monday around 5:30 p.m. The situation in the penitentiary establishment returned to order around 9 p.m. Four detainees who allegedly incited the protest, however, will spend the night in a security cell.
The tensions linked to the strike movement, which began in all the country’s prisons on Sunday at 10 p.m., are undoubtedly also having an impact on the prisoners, declared the spokesperson for the prison administration, Kathleen Van De Vijver.
At the end of the evening walk, 74 detainees refused to return to their cells. Two sections of the federal police went to the scene around 8 p.m. When they arrived, 73 prisoners were still outside. By 9 p.m., all inmates were back inside, the prison administration said, noting that the prisoners returned to their cells without incident.
A strike to denounce inhumane conditions
According to the prison administration, this is the fourth uprising in a prison since Friday evening, after Turnhout, Hasselt and Bruges. The 48-hour strike by prison staff began at 10 p.m. on Sunday and will continue until 10 p.m. on Tuesday.
Prison staff across the country are taking this action to denounce detention and working conditions “inhuman” who reign there. Prison overcrowding, lack of staff and a Minister of Justice “who is stubborn” to want to apply short prison sentences at all costs, the observation made by the unions is clear.
There is no place!
“The FPS Justice has been underbudgeted for decades,” recalls Claudine Coupienne, permanent secretary at the CSC Public Services. “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.”
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