Fifty-five volunteer magistrates will be detained this weekend in a prison in the Brussels region to experience the life of detainees, Belgian Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne announced on Saturday.
“The magistrates know how things are done in a prison, but experiencing it for themselves can help them pronounce sentences with full knowledge of the facts,” said the federal minister, quoted in the statement.
The magistrates arrived at 09:00 a.m. (08:00 a.m. in Lisbon) at the Haren prison, a new center with a capacity for 1,190 inmates that will open its doors on September 30, where they will be treated as authentic detainees until the end of Sunday. , explained to France-Presse a spokesman for the penitentiary administration.
“The participating magistrates – criminal judges, investigating judges, prosecutors (…) – have volunteered. They will follow the orders and instructions of the prison staff. The goal is to make imprisonment as realistic as possible,” says the release.
“They will not be able to use cell phones, but they will have the opportunity to receive visits from relatives, just like the real detainees.
The magistrates follow the normal daily schedule of detainees, eat the same meals and have the same mandatory activities. They will perform, among other tasks, kitchen and laundry servitude. At 22:00 the lights go out,” the ministry said.
“This immersion offers magistrates who hand down prison sentences the opportunity to experience what it means to be deprived of liberty,” said Rudy Van de Voorde, Director General of Penitentiary Establishments, also quoted in the statement.
Source: TSF
