“Serious criminals continue to walk while short-term offenders are in prison. You sense that something is not right there,” says Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA) on Sunday in ‘The seventh day’. Last week, the Antwerp prison was shocked by violence against a detainee, with a 41-year-old prisoner tortured for days by five cellmates. According to Mayor Bart De Wever, the problem lies partly with policy.
Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 5:26 PM
While Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt (Open Vld) advocates immediately carrying out the shorter sentences, the unions want to put those shorter prison sentences on hold to combat overcrowding in prisons. And Bart De Wever also agrees. “You have to carry out those short sentences, but you can only do that if there is sufficient capacity. The Antwerp local police make more than a thousand drug-related arrests per year. I am very confused: I am the purveyor to the Begijnenstraat, but as mayor I also have to monitor the well-being of those institutions on my territory,” he says in ‘The seventh day’.
De Wever complains about the slowness of the system and also sees the direct consequences of this in Antwerp. “The Antwerp police has a ‘chase team’. And they are actually constantly arresting convicted criminals, people who have been sentenced to years in prison. Those criminals must be transferred to prison,” he says. “But that doesn’t happen automatically, they don’t present themselves with a suitcase. So you have to go get it. But the judiciary has said: ‘Don’t do it again’. So now you are faced with a very strange situation: people who have been sentenced to one year have been pushed in. And people who have been sentenced to eight years in prison, serious criminals, now continue to walk around freely.”
Technically unemployed
Due to the slowness of the system, very serious criminals now continue to walk around freely, says De Wever. “We now have to wait for a replacement from the sentencing court, which gradually announces which criminals should be transferred to prison. So that police chase team is now technically unemployed,” it said. “Serious criminals continue to walk, while short-term offenders remain in prison. You sense that something is not right there. That decision comes from the judiciary. They can’t do anything else anymore.”
De Wever places responsibility for this with Minister Van Tigchelt. “It is a direct consequence of the policy that has been pursued. That is inexplicable. If the guards are on strike, it is very difficult for me to be angry with those guards. Because one visit to the Begijnenstraat is enough to understand it. We systematically violate human rights there.”
But he doubts whether the abuses in the prison will also play a role in the elections. “Public opinion has no sympathy for those prisoners. And certainly not with sexual offenders and that is wrong because they are sick and they should not be there,” De Wever concludes.