Saudi Gazette report RIYADH — The Directorate General of Prisons rents homes to women convicts who cannot go back to their families. It will also build factories to provide the inmates with work, Director General of Prisons Maj. Gen. Ali Al-Harithy said on Saturday. “We will not allow female prisoners to be harmed by any of their families after they have served their sentence. Regardless, threats against them will always be there,” he said. Al-Harithy was addressing a press conference after launching “the unified week of GCC inmates”. He said the event aimed at enlightening members of the society about the need to integrate ex-convicts back into society and to change their negative perception of prisoners. Al-Harithy denied claims that HIV-infected prisoners were mixing freely with healthy inmates and said carriers of any contagious diseases are quarantined in separate cells. “We are fully implementing the recommendations of the health authorities to quarantine inmates with contagious diseases,” he said. He said the directorate was studying the use of electronic tags to monitor prisoners as an alternative to locking them up in penitentiaries. “There are many alternative punishments approved by the courts. The prison itself is a punishment and not a place to harness inmates,” he said. Al-Harithy announced that the directorate would grant a piece of land near Al-Hayer prison in Riyadh to the Saudi Industrial Property Authority (MODON) to construct about 120 factories to provide inmates with work opportunities. “We have a number of programs for the welfare of prisoners,” he said. The director denied claims that some prisoners are kept in prisons after serving their terms. “We follow up the case of each prisoner every two weeks. There are rules and regulations against delaying the cases of prisoners for more than six months. Usually the cases would be considered and finalized within five to 40 days,” he said. He made it clear that no prisoners would be locked up after the end of their prison term unless there were other cases pending against them. Al-Harithy said a number of businessmen were helping prisoners to pay debts of less than SR50,000. “Special committees will look into the cases of prisoners sentenced for failure to pay debts of more than SR50,000,” he said. The director said jailed foreigners were allowed to communicate with their families abroad through the use of modern technologies and social media. He could not give the exact number of GCC prisoners in the Kingdom or Saudi prisoners in other GCC countries but said there were agreements between these countries to swap inmates. “We do not differentiate between Saudi and foreign prisoners. They all receive equal treatment. We provide the prisoners with education until higher studies,” he said.
