Interview

Belgium: prison within prison

Solitary confinement has consequences.

Solitary confinement: a disciplinary measure or a surveillance decision?
From their unhygienic conditions and restricted contact with the outside world to the altered sense of time and space experienced there, solitary confinement cells are under scrutiny. The Central Supervisory Board for Prisons (Conseil central de surveillance pénitentiaire, CCSP) published, in October 2021, a report on the use of punishment cells1.

Marc Nève is a criminal defence lawyer specialising in penitentiary law and president of the CCSP. Prison Insider asked him three questions.


  1. Also called cachots (literally, dungeons), another name for disciplinary cells in Belgium. 

Their primary function is, of course, as punishment. It means isolating a prisoner on account of an offence

The prisoner’s deteriorating mental health can be observed over time

In the south, construction is still underway