officers

“Not a positive conversation,” the prison unions called Thursday’s meeting with Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt (Open VLD). The fact that the minister passed the torch after an hour to his chief of staff to answer questions in Parliament says “a lot about his respect”, according to the unions. The strike continues.

The prison staff stopped work for an indefinite period at 10 pm on Monday evening. It does this, among other things, in protest against overcrowding and staff shortages in prisons. “We had hoped that concrete measures would be proposed during this consultation to combat overcrowding,” said Robby De Kaey of the socialist trade union ACOD. “There are 200 detainees sleeping on the floor in our country.”

Van Tigchelt emphatically denied the latter in Parliament. According to him, the number of ‘ground sleepers’ was reduced to 82. In parliament, the Minister of Justice listed numerous measures that should eventually combat overcrowding in prisons. Both the majority and the opposition asked him tough questions. But the liberal showed himself to be combative and could count on the verbal support of his predecessor, Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD).

The Minister of Justice was unrelenting about the introduction of minimum services. “The minimum level of service is a matter of human rights and the safety of our staff. I want it to be guaranteed from the start,” he responded to criticism that he wanted to curtail the right to strike.

Minimal service

He makes the point after a detainee was molested by cellmates in the Antwerp prison during a strike in which the legal rules of minimum services were not observed. Van Tigchelt wants to tighten those rules, much to the dismay of the unions. Go ahead, the PS and PVDA ask that the minister focus more on overpopulation, they support the demands of the unions.

To combat overcrowding, the unions are asking to suspend the implementation of short sentences. “The justice department said that was impossible,” says De Kaey, “we made many comments, but we received nothing more than a listening ear. Not a single constructive proposal was made. This is inadequate. That is why we are continuing our strike.”

Van Tigchelt does not give in to that either. Removing the short sentences would make the execution of the sentence unbelievable. Moreover, this would cause inflation in sentencing and, in the long term, increase the prison population.

Because the strike is of indefinite duration, prison staff are being requisitioned – a first. The governor is making progress, and the police may visit the prison guards’ homes. The union is aware of cases where the police came to the parents’ home. “That is a violation of privacy and our right to disconnect,” says De Kaey.

“Such a requisition deters potential new colleagues, while we need to make this job more attractive,” says Tanguy Degraeve, a prison guard in Ghent. Due to the requisitions, there is a “more normal occupancy than on a weekday”. Degraeve: “It is absurd that we employ more people on a strike day than on a normal day.” De Kaey also says that some prisons now have better occupancy. The requisitioned employees are asked to limit themselves to core tasks. Van Tigchelt listed them in Parliament: “A hot meal a day, being able to leave the cell for an hour and two showers a week.” According to the minister, the number of guards requested remained limited. On Wednesday, this involved 68 penitentiary officers.