PrisonCloud – In-Cell Digital Services for Belgian Prisoners

Belgium's newly built Beveren and Leuze-en-Hainaut prisons — the latter inaugurated in May 2014 with capacity for 352 men — opened with a purpose-built digital platform, PrisonCloud, installed in every cell, reported at the time as the first system of its kind in Belgium and among the first in Europe.

Through an in-cell screen, keyboard and individual login, prisoners can access curated web categories (healthcare information, job search, e-learning), request library books, order canteen items, make monitored phone calls and view their court records, without a free-form browser or URL bar.

The platform blocks unauthorised navigation while logging activity for staff, replacing some routine in-person services with self-service access to a curated set of categories.

A 2019 study by Maes, Robberechts, Beyens and Robert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel / NICC), 'PrisonCloud: The Beating Heart of the Digital Prison Cell,' found the platform could ease reintegration and reduce staff workload for routine services, but also documented new forms of isolation and shifts in prisoner-staff dynamics as some in-person interactions were replaced by self-service. Contemporaneous press coverage (Reason, 2016) confirmed the paid on-demand entertainment options triggered public controversy in Belgium over cost (around €3 per film) and content.

PrisonCloud has not been rolled out beyond a small number of newly built prisons, and independent research flags real trade-offs — reduced human contact and monitoring concerns — rather than unambiguous success, making it a useful, evidence-documented case rather than a template to copy uncritically.