In the jails of the fatherland : the penitentiary repression of disloyal civilians after the First World War in Belgium

Post-war penitentiary repression remains an unexplored angle of the Belgian historiography of the Great War. It was nevertheless a key task of the state when reclaiming its post-conflict authority and legitimacy, as popular violence was rising in a divided and devastated country. How did the state repress its own citizens in the immediate aftermath of the war? How did it manage the detention of the numerous ‘anti-patriotic’ suspects? Which behaviours were targeted, and which ‘bad Belgians’ actually ended up in jail? How were the detention conditions experienced by them? This essay aims to provide a first overview of the role played by prisons in the restoration of the post-war political rule of Belgium, to describe its legal boundaries, and to explore the daily-life conditions of prisoners after the war. It reveals how wartime and post-war political decisions impacted the arrests policy of suspects and how those decisions modified the detention conditions of the prisoners