Compatible victims? Prison overcrowding and penal reform in Belgium

The Belgian criminal justice system has recently gone through a period of unprecedented legislative reform. One of the major innovations has been the establishment of a new type of tribunal which is responsible for decision-making and follow-up related to the execution of penal sanctions (tribunal de l’application des peines/strafuitvoeringsrechtbank). This new institution is created and regulated by two pieces of legislation, formally approved in May 2006. The paper discusses the Parliamentary trajectory of this reform and pays special attention to how a victim's perspective (that is, the enactment of certain types of information and hearing rights for certain categories of victims of crime) came to be included in the new regulation. It is argued that one of the most important implications of the whole reform (that is, the future loss of Ministerial control with respect to managing the prison population) has contributed to the legal construction of the victim in the legal proposal as submitted by the Government to the Senate. The provisions in this legal proposal which related to victims of crime needed to be ‘compatible’ with an age-old problem of serious prison overcrowding. The legal proposal, therefore, was oriented towards defining victims in such a way that giving them a role in the post-sentencing phase would not hamper the smooth release of inmates out of the Belgian prison system.