Young Belgian Criminals Freed Because Prisons Are Full

Belgian juvenile detention centers are so full the police are being forced to regularly release teenage criminals soon after they are arrested, the Belgian papers report today, after 15 young thugs were released over the weekend, no matter the severity of their crimes.

My partial translation of the account carried by the major French Belgian paper Le Soir:

The public prosecutor of Brussels had to release no less than 15 minors (9 Saturday and 6 on Sunday), over the weekend, due to lack of space in detention centers. It is a "dramatic" situation, according to Brussels' francophone magistrate.

"Some cases are sufficiently serious that they require a place in detention centers", the prosecutor's spokesperson said. "But if we cannot find a solution to the placement within 24 hours, we are obligated to let them go. It's a recurring problem, but it is once again painfully illustrated this weekend.
There is no room anywhere: not at Everberg, nor at Fraipont, nor at Braine-le-Château. It's really dramatic and it's a serious problem that the French community needs to address urgently.
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The latest serious act was committed Saturday night. A 16-year old youth grabbed a 79-year old's purse in Rhode-Saint-Genèse. In falling, she fractured her writst, her shoulder and her hip. The pursesnatcher, well known to police, was arrested and put in custody.

After his preliminary hearing by the judge, he was seemingly freed.

Two other juvenile delinquents were released last week, shortly after being arrested for having dropped a block of concrete from an overpass, onto the driver's compartment of a passing truck. Translated from the Belgian media source 7Sur7:

The two 14-year old adolescents who had thrown a concrete block weighing 30 kg [approx 60 pounds] from the top of the E411 bridge at Vedrin (in Namur), onto the windshield of a truck that was driving along the autoroute, were freed Thursday due to lack of space in detention centers.
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By a miracle, the driver of the 18-wheeler was not injured.

Cushy UK Prisons: Europe's New "No-Go Zones"?

Breakfast in bed, tv, cash perks for good behavior... the age of Newgate Prison is definitely over. I wonder what Elizabeth Fry would think?


If "life in British prisons is so comfortable that inmates have given up trying to escape", as the British media reports today, then that is scandal enough, but if the prisons are so understaffed that sections of them are now "no-go zones" for police, surely that is the far more troublesome revelation.

Yet, it is passed over like a pebble at the bottom of the Thames.

Was it just hyperbole on Glyn Travis' part, or have the good people of Great Britain become so shell-shocked by their collapsing country that they can only handle one nightmare at a time..?

(Video of the story here):

...
"We have got no-go areas in certain prisons because prisoners have got complete control. There is not sufficient staff, there is no interaction between staff," [Glyn Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association] told BBC radio.

"We have got a serious crisis in our prisons today, but unfortunately prisons are not a vote-winner, so we are a soft target for the government to force its fiscal policy on public servants." Travis said intruders had entered the low-security Everthorpe jail in Yorkshire, northern England, by scaling a wall using ladders and he said cases had been uncovered of prostitutes entering open prison to service inmates.
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"These were prisoners who have a history of escaping from lawful custody, and the prisoners did not take the opportunity or plan to escape because, we believe, life is so cushy in the prison system," he said.
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Travis blamed the problems in jails on chronic under-staffing. "We have got a massive shortfall of staff. We are 1,000 prison officers short across the country.
"There is a serious recruitment problem," he said.

Sky News adds some details from Mr. Travis' account, suggesting that UK prisons may not be "no-go zones" as far as fellow criminals are concerned:

"Members of the public were climbing over the prison wall to take drugs into prison," he said.

"They had a ladder on the opposite side of the wall and prisoners were so comfortable in the environment they were living in, that none of the prisoners tried to climb up the ladder and escape.

"Now, to me that says there's something wrong in society when people are breaking into prisons to bring drugs and prostitutes, and the prisoners are quite happy to stay in our prisons."