Belgium: voluntary magistrates imprisoned for two days to test a new prison
Prisoners work in the production workshop of the Marche-en-Famenne prison in Belgium (illustration image).
AFP - BRUNO FAHY
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
In the future prison of Haren in the north of Brussels, 55 volunteer magistrates were locked up for the weekend.
They are judges or prosecutors and went to test the places before the opening of the prison.
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With our correspondent in Brussels,
Pierre Bénazet
They were 80 to turn themselves in, 55 were selected and are currently behind bars in Haren prison.
Or rather from the “prison village” of Haren, according to the Ministry of Justice.
A village born from the fact that this new establishment is called upon to replace the three current prisons in Brussels.
On ten hectares, Haren brings together around fifteen main buildings which break with the old star-shaped penitentiary architecture.
The judges and the prosecutors spend two nights in prison: they serve as guinea pigs for the future guards and experiment with some of the novelties of the place, such as the free route to the visiting room.
They will not have the right to their mobile phone and will have to participate in compulsory activities such as cooking and laundry.
"
It gives them the opportunity to experience what deprivation of liberty means
," says the director of the prison administration.
They will be released this Sunday at 4 p.m. – except for those who crack, those will be released on request.
The inaugural ribbon is due to be cut on September 30 and some of the prisoners currently held elsewhere have already volunteered for the move, to get out of their current dilapidated prisons as soon as possible.
It is here that the nine defendants of the
trial of the attacks of March 22, 2016
must be imprisoned, they are for the moment scattered all over Belgium.
The Minister of Justice affirms that this experience will help these magistrates to assess whether prison is the best solution for all convicts.
He may thus hope to reduce prison overcrowding in Belgium.
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