By Adnan Shabrawi

Okaz/Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — The Saudi judiciary is considering to introduce alternative punishments including social work for people convicted of minor crimes instead of making them serve prison time.

Informed sources has said people who are sentenced to alternative punishments will be made to wear electronic bracelets so that prison authorities can follow up their movements and know their whereabouts.

Director General of Prisons Maj. Gen. Mohammed Al-Asmari said they were very close to applying alternative punishments on prisoners who are jailed for minor offenses and introducing technology to monitor them day and night.

A judge who was specializing in alternative punishments welcomed the initiative and said the move was long awaited.

Sheikh Yasser Al-Balawi, former chief of the Executive Court in Jeddah who was the first to introduce alternative punishments in the Kingdom, said he was happy that his long cherished dream was finally coming to be implemented.

"The application of substitute punishments will benefit the individual, society and the country at large," he said.

Balawi was confident that alternative punishment would correct the prisoner and enable him or her to live as a good individual in society away from hard-core criminals serving prison time.

He asked the prisons directorate to establish the basic infrastructure needed for this project and said the experiment should be expanded to all prisons in the Kingdom.

Balawi said judges who were supporting the alternative punishments were worried that there would not be any mechanism in the prisons for applying those punishments.

He called for applying electronic monitoring for prisoners who go out on parole to spend the Eid holidays with the families or to attend social functions such as weddings and funerals.

"Those who are imprisoned for failing to honor financial commitments are the most worthy of alternative punishments," Balawi said.

Sheikh Turki Al-Qarni, a former judge, has said the judicial system does not make it imperative on the judges to apply alternative punishment.

"The application of alternative punishments requires clear guarantees for monitoring their implementation," he said.

Asmari, on the other hand, said alternative punishments would enable poisoners to spend their sentences by doing social work, which will benefit them, society and the country at large.

He revealed that the project of the alternative punishments has been forwarded to the committee of experts at the Council of Ministers to approve.

Asmari said the alternative punishments were also necessitated by the overcrowding of prisons by non-Saudis, which often impeded the reform program for the Saudi inmates.

He said the initiative was being supported by the ministries of interior, labor and social development, justice and the Public Prosecution.