Court Orders Belgian State to Reduce Occupancy at Ghent Prison to 110% of Its Actual Capacity

Application by the Order of Flemish Bars

The Order of Flemish Bars (OVB—the claimant) asked the court to order the Belgian State to reduce the occupancy rate at Ghent Prison to no more than 110% of its actual capacity—specifically, 262 places—within six months.

According to the OVB, the current overcrowding violates the fundamental rights of people who, following judicial decisions, are being held in Ghent Prison either as incarcerated persons or as individuals subject to internment.

The OVB specifically pointed to the various seriously harmful consequences of structural overcrowding, including:

• Insufficient personal living space
• People sleeping on the floor
• Inadequate sanitary facilities
• Poor hygiene and infrastructure
• A restricted prison regime
• Inadequate medical and mental-healthcare services

Position of the Belgian State

The Belgian State acknowledges the reality of overcrowding and its harmful consequences. However, it argues that the OVB has failed to consider the efforts being made to address overcrowding or the fact that the problem cannot be resolved immediately or easily in an acceptable manner.

The Belgian State refers, among other things, to the Emergency Act of July 18, 2025, the measures contained within it, and additional initiatives currently being prepared, all of which require time.

For those reasons, the Belgian State—the defendant—argues that the OVB’s application is unfounded. Alternatively, it asked the court to postpone the case for one year, allowing time to evaluate the results of measures already taken or announced to address overcrowding at Ghent Prison.

Court’s Assessment of the OVB’s Application — Article 3 of the ECHR

The court assessed conditions at Ghent Prison under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Article 3 provides that no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The court established both the existence of overcrowding and its effects on detention conditions. The 2025 annual report of the Ghent Supervisory Commission shows that Ghent Prison had an occupancy rate of almost 200%. This overcrowding places considerable pressure on available living space, hygiene, access to facilities and services, and general living conditions within the institution.

The court also found that the current prison-overcrowding situation is structural and systemic—a point the Belgian State does not dispute. It is therefore not a temporary failure within an otherwise functioning system, but a recurring and lasting problem of which the defendant has been aware for many years.

Considering the scale and persistence of the overcrowding, together with its harmful consequences, the court concluded that the conditions to which many people held in Ghent Prison are exposed constitute degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3 of the ECHR.

The court did not dispute that the government has made efforts and is considering further measures. However, those efforts do not alter the reality of years of structural overcrowding and its harmful effects on the fundamental rights of incarcerated people.

Court’s Decision

The court ruled that the Belgian State is required to remedy the consequences of this unlawful situation, arising from the established violation of Article 3 of the ECHR.

The court therefore ordered the Belgian State to reduce the actual occupancy of Ghent Prison to 110% of its real capacity. The court stated that it is not responsible for selecting the specific measures necessary to achieve this result. Those choices remain within the policymaking discretion of the competent legislative and executive authorities.

The Belgian State has been given six months to comply. If overcrowding continues after that period, a penalty of €500 per day for each incarcerated person above the permitted capacity will be imposed. To maintain its deterrent effect, the penalty will gradually rise to €750 beginning in the second year and €1,000 beginning in the third year.

The total amount of potential penalties has been capped at €45 million.

Court’s Reasoning

In reaching its decision, the court considered the following:

• The protection guaranteed by Article 3 of the ECHR would be meaningless if a national court merely declared that a violation had occurred without ordering an appropriate remedy capable of bringing the violation to an effective end.
• The court recognizes that the causes of prison overcrowding are complex and cannot be reduced to a single policy choice. They result from a combination of factors, including developments in criminal-justice policy, sentence enforcement, prosecution practices, available detention capacity, infrastructure investment, and the organization of the prison system. A lasting solution therefore requires coordinated action by the different branches of government.
• Prison overcrowding in Belgium has been known about for many years and has repeatedly been the subject of warnings, recommendations, and legal proceedings. The established violations cannot continue to be justified by referring to the complexity of the problem. The court therefore concluded that particularly decisive efforts must be made to develop lasting solutions. Budgetary, organizational, or infrastructure difficulties cannot justify conditions that violate Article 3 of the ECHR.
• In the court’s view, the structural nature of the problem does not show that solutions are impossible. Instead, it demonstrates the need for sufficiently prioritized, decisive, and coordinated measures that are monitored with the utmost care.
• Given the current violation of Article 3, the court found that it would not be justified to postpone its assessment for an additional period while awaiting an evaluation of measures already taken or announced. The Belgian State’s request for a one-year postponement was therefore rejected.
• The OVB’s request that the judgment be published in the Belgian Official Gazette and communicated to all judges hearing criminal cases was rejected. The court did not see how those measures would contribute to remedying the unlawful situation it had identified.
• The imposition of a financial penalty is a necessary additional incentive to secure an effective and lasting solution. The present situation does not allow any further delay in adopting measures capable of having a significant short-term impact. However, the potential penalties were capped at €45 million because a higher amount would provide no meaningful additional incentive and could go beyond the purely remedial purpose of the penalty.

Voluntary Intervention by an Incarcerated Person

The voluntary intervention of an incarcerated person currently held at Ghent Prison will be considered at the hearing scheduled for November 27, 2026.