AMMAN — The
Ministry of Justice signed a
memorandum of understanding with various entities to implement alternative
sentences to imprisonment. The memo focuses on first-time offenders convicted
of misdemeanors and sentenced for a period not exceeding one year.
اضافة اعلان
The move is in line with the Cabinet’s approval of a
regulation that outlines the means and mechanisms to be pursued in alternative
punishments for the year 2022.
The memorandum of understanding comprises the
ministries of labor, agriculture, social development, youth, and education, as
well as the Public Security Directorate and a handful of universities.
Community service, used in many
Western nations, is
envisaged as an alternative penalty to imprisonment. It will obligate a convict
to perform unpaid work for the community for a period specified by a Jordanian
court.
The service, between 40 and 200 hours, would have to
be completed within a year of allocation.
Additionally, a convict may be obligated to serve
community probation, a term used to signal banning a lawbreaker from accessing
certain places within a community and to undergo probation for a period of no
less than six months and not more than three years, which will be determined by
the court.
A third alternative obliges a felon to submit to a
rehabilitation program determined by the court. This approach aims at
correcting and improving behavior.
Nizar Al-Kharabsheh, a spokesperson for the Ministry
of Justice, told
Jordan News that “the principle of alternative
penalties states that the convict has the chance to undergo a social punishment
program, instead of being sentenced to jail.”
“The convict may be ordered to plant 100 trees in a
public park, while another may be asked to do maintenance work, paint,
cleaning, or do any other task that the convict is able to perform in a school,
a place of worship, or in a charitable organization,” he added.
Through alternative sentences, the ministry seeks to
address overcrowding in jailhouses and rehabilitation centers across the
Kingdom, and ease the financial burden on the government, Kharabsheh explained.
“One of the significant positive effects of this
program is the fact that the convict does not need to stop working, and can
thus still earn money. This is a great improvement over imprisonment, which
constitutes an economic burden on the family,” Kharabsheh pointed out.
The judge overseeing the case can use their
discretion to propose an alternative sentence to prison time, but only in cases
where the verdict in the misdemeanor is imprisonment for a period not exceeding
one year.
“These alternative punishments are applied to
misdemeanors only, not to major crimes,” Kharabsheh said.
He said that prisoners need to agree to the
alternative terms for them to go into effect. Alongside that, they need to be
first-time offenders.
“There are countless alternative punishments”,
Kharabsheh said. He said “if the convict is a doctor, for example, the
alternative punishment may be for him to practice his profession as a doctor in
a youth center.”
“The alternative punishment is chosen according to
several criteria, including the person’s ability to carry out the designated
punishment,” he said. He added that if a convict rejected the alternative
terms, “he will be handed down the basic penalty, which is imprisonment.”
The recent
amendments to the Penal Code, which came into effect on June 24, gave judges
the discretionary authority to assess if the circumstances of the case allow them
to replace a jail sentence with one or more of the alternative penalties. These
include community service, community monitoring, electronic monitoring, or
banning the offender from accessing specific public places.
The regulation was introduced for the purposes of
defining the means and procedures for executing the sentence with alternatives
to penalties in accordance with the recently amended provisions of Article 25
of the Penal Code. It helps determine the mechanism of executing the sentence,
and the procedures for replacing imprisonment with alternative penalties after
the ruling becomes final and cannot be appealed.
Ministry of Justice figures show that 356 cases of
minor misdemeanor were meted out a different kind of punishment last year, with
offenders ordered to perform community service.
Another 277 similar cases, also from last year,
still await verdicts and sentencing.
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