Sonja Snacken

Prison Privatization: An International Perspective

It should be noted at the outset that private prisons are not a new phenomena. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contract and lease agreements between prison authorities and private entrepreneurs were common, either for the use of inmate labour, or for transportation. Public awareness of abuses, demands for better standards, objections from trade unions that jobs were taken up by prison workers and the adoption of rehabilitation as a major goal of punishment were the impetus for a change to a more centralized public system (McConville, 1987; Dilulio, 1990; Feeley, 1991; Moyle, 1993; Borna, 1986; Ryan and Ward, 1989a, 1989b).

Conditional Release in Belgium: How Reforms Have Impacted Recall

Following the Dutroux case in 1996, the Belgian parole system was thoroughly reformed in 1998 and 2006. Decision-making was transferred from the Minister of Justice to multidisciplinary “Sentence Implementation Courts”, supervision and follow up of conditionally released prisoners was tightened and the proportion of recalls increased. Recall of conditional release hence results from the interaction between three main parties: the offender, the supervising probation officer (“justice assistant” in Belgium) and the Sentence Implementation Court who takes the final decision. This paper looks into the consequences of these reforms for two of these parties: the justice assistants, who struggle to keep their professional discretion in the decision to recall, and prisoners, who increasingly turn away from conditional release, thus avoiding recall to prison altogether.

Does Reintegration Need REHAB? Early Release Procedures for Prisoners without a Legal Permit of Residence in Belgium

Since the eighties, Belgium faces an increasing number of foreign prisoners. Accordingly, the number of foreign prisoners without a legal permit of residence, who are incarcerated in Belgian prisons due to (suspicion of) violation of the Belgian Criminal law is also rising With regard to early release, all prisoners fall under the Belgian penitentiary Acts of 2005 and 2006 in which ‘reintegration’ is an important leading principle. However, a considerable part of the foreign prisoners without a legal permit of residence is exposed to expulsion under the Belgian Act of 1980 on the entry, stay, settlement and expulsion of foreigners after their (early) release. The use of different legal frameworks with conflicting rationales with regard to release from prison has consequences for the possibilities to prepare the reintegration of foreign prisoners without residence permit. The aim of this article is to analyse the meaning, use and importance of the reintegration principle with regard to the early release from prison of foreign prisoners without a legal permit of residence. The consequences of the interaction of requirements from immigration and penitentiary laws with regard to their release in society will be discussed. Also some statistical data on the presence of foreign prisoners without a legal permit of residence in the Belgian prisons are presented and commented from a methodological point of view.

Punishment, legitimate policies and values: Penal moderation, dignity and human rights:

Twenty years ago, we described how changing prison populations in western countries result from a complex interaction between criminality, external (demography, economy), internal (criminal justice policies) and intermediate factors (public opinion, politics and media). While the outcome of these interactions is contingent, we advocated a reductionist penal policy in order to curb penal inflation. Subsequent macro-sociological analyses and comparative penological studies raised important questions though concerning the possibilities for political action to influence levels of punitiveness. This article looks again into the scope for political decision making in fostering penal moderation in western countries. By elaborating on a relational concept of ‘legitimacy’ of policies, we argue that moderate penal policies can politically be legitimized through appeal to dignity and human rights as fundamental values.

Belgian Sentencing as a Bifurcated Practice

Belgian sentencing is in a period of turmoil. Belgian judges value their independence. Most believe in the desirability of individualized sentencing and resent intrusions on their autonomy. Although many continue to hold classsical views about the purposes of sentencing, new practices and laws, triggered partly by several decades of rising imprisonment rates and recent efforts by policy makers and correctional officials to contain it, have changed the penal landscape. The public prosecutor has increasing authority to divert cases from investigation and from sentencing judges, leading to de facto sentencing powers for prosecutors. Recent and upcoming innovations have created new freestanding sanctions of work penalties (often elsewhere called community service), electronic monitoring, and probation. A more fully bifurcated legal system is emerging with longer prison sentences for some offenses and offenders, including postprison preventive detention, and more community punishments aiming for a reduced use of imprisonment for others. Many judges are unconvinced though about the desirability of reduced imprisonment use for some convicted offenders. It remains to be seen what Belgian sentencing will look like when practices incorporating recent changes have stabilized.