After consultations this afternoon with the cabinet of Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt (Open VLD), the unions will submit the proposals on the table to their supporters. The minister himself was not present. “The supporters decide whether the strike notice is activated or not,” says Frank Conings, federal justice secretary of ACV Public Services. A similar sound is heard in the socialist union. “I am not going to reject the proposals, but I am not going to defend them either,” says Robbie De Kaey, federal secretary of ACOD Prisons.
In concrete terms, the intention is to expand the extended prison leave, as granted in the past to tackle overcrowding. For example, for sentences of up to ten years, with the exception of terrorist and sexual offences, there was a regime of seven days’ detention, seven days’ leave. But that leave would now be extended to several weeks. De Kaey says that this would result in three hundred fewer detainees staying in prison. “That corresponds to the number of so-called ground sleepers.”