Today, the prison officers, in common front, go back to the crenel to castigate the prison overcrowding. Huy prison is supposed to accommodate 62 inmates. “Yesterday Monday, we had 92 detainees. Once, we reached 95.” But why don’t we just close the prison door to new entries? “We are overloaded because we are a remand center and we cannot refuse anyone because we then risk a procedural defectexplains Luc Monfort. Any arrest warrant must be executed.” It is thus in a remand center which welcomes those who have received an arrest warrant. Unlike prisons that house those who are serving a sentence. Since the closure of Verviers prison, the province of Liège has only two remand centres: Lantin and Huy. And in both, there is overcrowding. “We have no choice, we must accept all those whom the prosecution places under arrest warrantexplains Luc Monfort. Nor can we ask the police not to do their job to relieve the prisons…”
Huy prison is permanently overcrowded with the associated health risks. “Some arrive at the prison in sanitary conditions that are not always at the top. The overcrowding is such that we put potentially sick people (with lice, scabies or even Covid) with healthy people. We put these prisoners in sanitary conditions. hazard.” The SLFP delegate reassures: there has never been an epidemic in Huy. But two or three years ago, an epidemic of measles shook the Lantin prison. “You can’t play with people’s health like that.”
In each situation of overcrowding, a letter is sent to the director, to the acting mayor Christophe Collignon, to the acting mayor Éric Dosogne. “We inform them of the situation and the dangerousness of the thingses. They tell us that they are forwarding it to the competent authorities.” And on this one, unions and local management are on the same wavelength: “We are trying to find solutions, we are contacting as many people as possible to get things moving. But the situation could become more and more dangerous. Imagine a riot and a mass escape… The detainees would find themselves in the middle of the city.”
A prison planned for 62 detainees (but with an acceptable limit set at 85) which accommodates 92, how does it do it? “We push the walls. We have duo, quartet cells, some solos too. We are then obliged to put them in twos, threes or fours. We do what we can but it becomes problematic and recurrent.” The staff adapts. “We learned to be flexible, reactive, but it’s complicated. We have a few long-term patients, but no more than usual. Overcrowding has become something recurring, it’s kind of entered into knots…”