Prisons are an unfortunate byproduct of human society. They are places both for punishment and exclusion from society, institutions where prisoners pay for their crimes and where they can wreak no further harm on society. Sometimes, though far too infrequently, they are places of rehabilitation where ill-doers learn not only the error of their ways but the employment and social skills to reenter society after serving their sentences. Rehabilitation is the hardest element of a prison system to bring to fruition. Locking people up with a wide array of criminals can easily have a negative influence on the individual prisoner, enabling him to learn the ways of criminality more easily than those of civilized society. Director General of Prisons Ali Bin Hussein Al-Harithy has announced that judges hearing public prosecutions will now have the leeway to offer non-prison sentences to those convicted of a wide array of crimes. It will be up to the judge to determine if an alternative to incarceration will benefit the convicted party more than imprisonment. This is a sensible approach to the human phenomenon of criminal behavior and ways to correct it. Certainly, not everyone who engages in small crimes is a lost soul or even a life-long criminal. There are any number of factors that may influence an individual's bad decision to commit a crime and the judiciary should exercise wisdom in taking into account any or all of those factors. A sensitive and sensible approach to deterring crimes could go a long way in preventing an individual from reentering prison. Punishment must certainly be a part of the price paid by someone convicted of a crime but punishment alone is not likely to deter future criminal activity. Punishment plus an effort to make the convicted realize that there are more satisfying and successful ways to navigate through life may reduce recidivism and result in adding one more productive member of society to the Kingdom. __
