Belgium’s Justice Minister Admits ‘Abominable’ Prison State
Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) publicly acknowledged on 15 October 2026 that the country’s prisons are in a dramatic and “abominable” state, conceding for the first time the full scale of a crisis laid bare by a two-part investigative documentary. Speaking on VRT NWS De Ochtend radio, Verlinden said the problems of overcrowding, drugs and staff shortages extend well beyond a single institution, while warning that budget uncertainty could stall the remedies her government has begun to prepare.
“I encountered an abominable situation when I became minister last year,” Verlinden said. “Unfortunately it is not only the case in the prison in Mechelen, but also in other places in our country.”
A Crisis Exposed Behind the Walls
The minister’s admission followed the VRT NWS Pano investigation “Overbevolkt” (Overcrowded), broadcast on 13-14 October 2026. Journalists Lauwke Vandendriessche and Fabian Lefevere were granted almost unrestricted ten-day access to Mechelen prison, Belgium’s most overcrowded facility, and documented conditions that internal bodies and courts have long condemned as inhumane.
The Pano report described roughly 150 detainees held in a building designed for 84 places, cells of 13 square metres sometimes housing five people, and a worn-out 19th-century structure where the food budget amounts to just six euros per detainee per day. Even the guards no longer dare enter the exercise yard, where police are called when fights break out, and about half of the prison’s staff leave within two years.
Bert Vermeulen, the prison’s director, offered a bleak assessment. “It is a negative story, isn’t it? I can’t immediately think of anything positive,” he said, adding that while he had always known overcrowding, it had “never been as bad as now.”
The Numbers Behind the Diagnosis
The documentary’s findings are anchored in record figures. On 5 January 2026, Belgian prisons held 13,478 people against a capacity of 11,296, an overcrowding rate of 19.6 per cent, a record high, according to a VRT NWS analysis of the data. Mechelen itself held 156 inmates for 84 places, an overcrowding rate of about 86 per cent, the highest in the country.
Nationwide, so-called floor sleepers, detainees given mattresses on the ground, peaked at 618 on 15 December 2025, up from 170 at the end of 2024. Verlinden pointed to the underlying trend: “Since 2020, more than 3,000 detainees have been added. That is roughly the capacity of seven prisons. Converted into euros, that means 1.5 billion euros.”
A Deepening Drug Problem
A central thread of the Pano investigation was the ubiquity of drugs inside Belgian detention. One detainee told the programme: “Clean coke, ordinary coke, ketamine, amphetamines, liquid… it can all be arranged. I sometimes think there are more drugs inside than outside the prison.”
Alain Blancke, a representative of the ACV Openbare Diensten union with more than 30 years of prison experience, was blunt. “Of course drugs are an enormous problem in the prisons: the vast majority of detainees are addicted to them,” he said. “It is the law of the jungle there.” He argued that overcrowded cells, combined with a lack of meaningful daily activity, only worsen addiction and mental-health problems, fuelling aggression and violence.
The Belgian Prison Service estimates that two in three detainees used drugs before detention and that one in three still does while incarcerated. Spokesperson Kathleen Van De Vijver said drugs “put the living and working climate in the prisons under pressure,” producing unpredictable behaviour among detainees and toward staff.
Geertjan Zuijdwegt, a guest professor at KU Leuven and a chaplain at Leuven Centraal, told the programme that prisons have become “a catch-all for all sorts of profiles,” with cuts to mental-health care pushing people into detention who would once have been treated elsewhere. “It is a matter of water flowing to the lowest point,” he said of the drugs that find their way in.
Government Measures and Their Limits
The crisis has driven a series of political battles. Verlinden introduced an emergency prison law in December 2023, and by early 2026 the government was still deadlocked: a core cabinet meeting on 16 January 2026 failed once more to agree on a plan. In March 2026, CD&V, MR and N-VA finally reached a deal, which the kernkabinet approved on 20 March.
The agreement provides for electronic ankle bracelets for sentences of up to 18 months and during the final 18 months of sentences of up to ten years, an extension of the emergency law, and faster deportation of detainees without legal residence. On 27 February 2026, the Council of Ministers also approved an updated Masterplan III for prison infrastructure, confirming new capacity in Antwerp, Mons, Verviers, Brussels and Hoogstraten and the recruitment of more than 570 full-time staff.
Verlinden defended the record. “If we had done nothing, the problem would have been much worse,” she said, citing drug testing made compulsory in prisons, additional resources including dogs trained to detect phones and drugs, and plans to isolate high-value targets in drug trafficking and organised crime.
Yet the measures drew immediate scepticism. Pierre Lefranc, chair of the Oversight Commission at Ghent prison, warned that the March deal targets only the smallest group of inmates. “The convicts, and those measures concern them, represent the smallest group in our prison,” he said, noting that Ghent holds roughly 500 detainees but only about 100 are convicted, while the rest are in pretrial detention or interned. “We very much doubt whether the measures will have any impact.”
Unions were equally critical, warning that the plan could even produce more floor sleepers. Blancke’s central argument is that nothing works until overcrowding itself is tackled. “As long as we don’t address that overcrowding, it is not going to succeed.”
The Human Cost and the Road Ahead
Verlinden has framed the issue as one the public too often ignores. “It is a problem that usually does not move many people. Many people turn their heads away,” she said. “But when prisoners are released, they are often still young people. Then it could be your neighbour or your colleague.”
She insisted that security and humane detention are not opposites. “Safety and humane detention are not contradictions: they go hand in hand. We are fooling ourselves if we think you can let this continue and ultimately have a safer society.”
The minister has linked the pace of reform to the federal budget negotiations now under way, with Prime Minister Bart De Wever threatening a debt brake if no deal is reached. “As long as we have no certainty about the financial picture with which we can get to work in 2027, we cannot prepare those measures and so everything is delayed,” she said. “And that while we really cannot afford any delay, because the urgency remains great.”
International studies cited in the Pano report indicate that detention in poor conditions fuels recidivism rather than preparing detainees for reintegration, a dynamic Vermeulen’s summary captures. With roughly 40 per cent of Mechelen’s population lacking legal residence in Belgium and addiction and psychiatric disorders running through the prison population, the question now is whether a budget agreement and the March deal can translate political acknowledgement into measurable improvement, or whether, as unions and oversight bodies fear, the floor sleepers will keep coming.