…and the Yellow Walls.
Merksplas is the 2nd largest prison in the Flemish community, with over 700 inmates. It too is a building with a history; it was originally used to incarcerate the homeless – who were made to work on the surrounding farmland – back when vagrancy was still a crime. As we walk through the prison yard, there is an inmate, swaddled tightly in a hood and coat, stooping down to pick up cigarette butts from the tarmac. ‘He’s been doing that for years’, a worker for the Belgian host organisation De Rode Antraciet informs me.
And it’s not hard to believe. For the 350 convicted inmates, there are another 350 inmates classed as ‘interns’. Interns are individuals who have committed crimes but, because of a mental illness or handicap, are not considered responsible for their deeds. Their sentence here will be indefinite. While their progress is reviewed intermittently, there is little chance of improvement while they are incarcerated in an institution that offers them no treatment. There is no money and no room in any bespoke institutions, with any places that do become available likely to be offered to individuals without a history of arson.
The officer who takes us round explains that the different wings are more like 10 individual prisons. He also tells us that as we walk through the wards we should take a look, but to try not to stop and stare like we’re in the zoo, ‘because no one likes to feel like a zoo animal’. The sentiment is valid, but as we walk through, not interacting with the prisoners and our presence in no way explained to them, it is hard not to feel like a voyeur. The ward for ‘psychopaths’ may have murals, fish tanks and pot plants, but the small thick oblong of glass in the doors of the two man cells forces the inhabitants to peer out with their heads at an awkward angle in order to see us, only exacerbating this impression of ‘otherness’.
In the ward for those with minor mental illnesses, interns are housed in long boarding school style dormitories – complete with porridge coloured bedding and lurid yellow walls. One of the interns curious enough to come out of the dorm stays well back, his face hard and defensive, until one of the Belgian hosts hails him. He immediately becomes human again as his face breaks into a grin and he returns the greeting.
The mentally handicapped, those with an IQ of below 70, are kept in a purpose built centre with bouncy tarmac and animals to pet. But cooped up in there indefinitely, for crimes they do not fully understand they have committed, it is hard to believe that doves and rabbits can really provide much comfort. One of the workers in this centre likens it to a 4 year old burning down your house – ‘are they responsible for what they’ve done?’. Yet without this comprehension, there is little to determine whether they will reoffend: ‘it is very easy to end up here, and very hard to leave’.
The grim dormitory allocated to older interns is reminiscent of a ward in a field hospital, complete with stacks of nappies. In the common room, Usher is blaring out on the TV as the men watch dull eyed, collapsed in varying states of dementia and decrepitude. It looks unlikely that these men are able to pose much further danger to society. However, there are some unfortunate inmates who will not even escape the prison in death. Although we do not visit it, there is a cemetery for unclaimed bodies. One of the workers from De Rode Antraciet tells me sadly that an 18 year old boy with whom he had worked is buried there.
Like everyone in our group, I feel subdued and shocked by the visit. However, what perhaps strikes me most is the bravery of the Belgian host organisation in choosing to show us their situation ‘warts and all’. Working for a charity involved in rehabilitation I am aware that I have only seen selected highlights from the British prison system. If this is the situation in Belgium – a country whose approach to rehabilitation is in some ways more progressive [see Part 1] – I can’t help but wonder what it must be like in the parts of our own prisons to which I have not been privy.