{"id":35442,"date":"2026-05-11T15:15:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/belgian-prison-staff-go-on-nationwide-strike-over-overcrowding-and-violence\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T15:15:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:15:37","slug":"belgian-prison-staff-go-on-nationwide-strike-over-overcrowding-and-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/belgian-prison-staff-go-on-nationwide-strike-over-overcrowding-and-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgian prison staff go on nationwide strike over overcrowding and violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/thumbs_b_c_5e0f0c19ce70b4633d98c27b57ca0692.jpg\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;margin-bottom:20px\"><\/p>\n<p>Prison staff across Belgium have launched a nationwide strike to protest overcrowding, increased violence and heavy workloads in the country&#8217;s prison system, according to the Belgian News Agency, Anadolu reports.<\/p>\n<p>The strike began at 6:00 a.m. local time after talks between unions and the office of Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden ended without agreement on measures to would address overcrowding and prison conditions.<\/p>\n<p>In a rare move, prison directors publicly backed the strike, describing the situation as &#8220;untenable&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Belgium&#8217;s director of the prison service, Mathilde Steenbergen, was expected to visit the strike site at Lantin prison in support of staff.<\/p>\n<p>Belgian prisons reportedly house 13,733 inmates, despite an official capacity of 11,064, while 754 inmates are said to be sleeping on mattresses on the floor.<\/p>\n<p>Unions have warned that staff shortages and violence inside prisons are worsening and could intensify over the summer holiday period.<\/p>\n<p>Prison authorities said the number of serious incidents in prisons has doubled over the past year while absenteeism linked to workplace injuries has cases caused by aggression have increased by more than 30 percent over the past two years.<\/p>\n<p>The situation has also drawn criticism from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, which last month warned that prison overcrowding in Europe risks leading to &#8220;inhuman and degrading treatment&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>We use cookies to improve the experience and display advertisements (Google AdSense).<br \/>\n          By clicking &#8220;Accept&#8221;, you agree to the use of cookies according to<br \/>\n          Privacy Policy<br \/>\n          and<br \/>\n          Cookies Policy.<br \/>\n          You can reject non-necessary cookies by clicking &#8220;Reject&#8221;.<\/p>\n<hr style=\"margin:30px 0\">\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#666\">Source: <strong>prizrenpost<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prison staff across Belgium have launched a nationwide strike to protest overcrowding, increased violence and heavy workloads in the country&#8217;s prison system, according to the Belgian News Agency, Anadolu reports. The strike began at 6:00 a.m. local time after talks between unions and the office of Belgian Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden ended without agreement on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[666],"class_list":["post-35442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-brief"],"views":8,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35444,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35442\/revisions\/35444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prizrenpost.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}