Joren (21) is an internee without help in a packed prison: “When am I going to commit the next misstep?”

What do you do with someone who has committed a crime and has been declared insane? Certainly not locked up without psychiatric help in an ordinary prison that is already packed. And yet it happens daily with almost 900 internees in our country, in Flanders that is almost 1 in ten prisoners, and the number is increasing. Their condition often deteriorates in prison, including Joren*: “Things are going from bad to worse here. I’m hurting myself and I’ve assaulted a cellmate in the meantime.”

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