Belgian prison tour lays bare grim reality of life behind bars

As Belgium grapples with chronic prison overcrowding, a local charity in Brussels has found an immersive way to highlight the problem — giving educational tours of a recently abandoned jail. Until it was officially shuttered in 2022, the dilapidated Forest prison housed inmates in cramped cells behind its red brick walls in the Belgian capital. Leading a group of AFP journalists along the empty corridors now spattered with pigeon droppings, Manuel Lambert, head of a charity called 9-square-metres, laid bare the issues.

His organisation takes its name from the standard cell size in Belgium, usually meant for two detainees but where three often have to squeeze together day and night. Lambert says that as the system has been stretched to breaking point, conditions have worsened and efforts to reintegrate prisoners into society have been neglected. “It was essential for us to have a place to address them, to make this former prison an educational tool,” explained Lambert, who has a list of around 3,000 people waiting to make a visit.

Belgium is among a number of European countries facing endemic prison overcrowding. For months, there have been more than 13,000 inmates in Belgium’s 39 prisons, which have a capacity of approximately 11,000 places. To ease pressures, the government proposed a series of emergency measures in March, including using electronic tags for those given sentences of fewer than 18 months. Those measures still need to go before parliament.