Faced with severe prison overcrowding, Belgium is considering an unusual solution, building or renting prisons abroad, local media reported on Wednesday.
Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) and Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt (N-VA) were on a multi-day visit to Albania and Kosovo to explore the possibility of building or renting a prison facility outside Belgium.
Belgian prisons have exceeded capacity, with over 13.000 inmates and only 11.000 places, marking record overcrowding. In some facilities, detainees sleep on mattresses placed directly on the floor.
The plan is based on the Danish agreement with Kosovo from 2021 and an earlier Belgian-Dutch experiment at Tilburg prison. According to the proposal, foreign nationals sentenced in Belgium but without a residence permit would serve their sentence in a prison built or rented in the Balkans.
“Allowing a person sentenced in Belgium, but without a residence permit, to serve their sentence in their country of origin means proper enforcement of justice and relieving our system,” Verlinden said before departure.
Belgium currently has about 4.400 undocumented prisoners – almost a third of the total prison population. According to media reports, the government hopes that relocating some of them abroad could reduce pressure on overcrowded prisons.
The two-day visit began in Pristina, where the ministers met with Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani and Justice Minister Blerim Sallahu, and then in Tirana with Justice Minister Besfort Lamallari and Interior Minister Albana Kociu.
The visit aims to assess political readiness to accept Belgian prisoners and to strengthen cooperation in combating organized crime, particularly drug trafficking, human smuggling, and money laundering.
The signing of a declaration on sharing seized assets of criminal networks is also expected. Belgium wants to recover part of the hundreds of millions of euros that Balkan criminal groups invested in real estate, uncovered during investigations into the encrypted SKY ECC network.
“Just in Albania, eight court proceedings are underway involving about 160 million euros in seized assets,” Verlinden said, adding:
“International cooperation is key – by confiscating assets, we hit them where it hurts most.”
