Belgium: Religions and Prisons in Law

Christians, Louis-Léon [UCL] Wattier, Stéphanie [UNamur]

In Belgium, the regulation of religion in prison has deeply changed over the past twenty years. Two major challenges have emerged: the first is the growing number of Muslim prisoners in Belgian prisons; the second is the question of the radicalization of some of these detainees. The terrorist events in Europe and Belgium have exacerbated these two challenges, which in turn have had repercussions on the prison regulation applied to all religions. The strengthening of the security rules has been done in a transversal and "non-discriminatory" way. All religious accommodations are now re-read against this security background more than in the context of international religious freedom requirements.