Verlooy’s enlightened ideas facilitated his choice for collaboration with the French during their military occupation of the Southern Netherlands. The Battle of Jemappes reignited his revolutionary fervour and he passionately dedicated himself again to politics. He was elected a provisory Brussels Deputy and became one of those tasked with visiting prisons to liberate those detainees who could be regarded as victims of arbitrariness or "gothic and feudal laws". In the Treurenberg prison, Verlooy and the other investigators found only debtors. They also established that in the madhouses "several individuals were detained rather for inhumane reasons than any natural disability". In the prison of Vilvoorde, they discovered prisoners who were detained due to not well-founded verdicts.