Buluwi from Samta Court in Jizan has defended the use of alternative sentences, describing them as a complete success in “all but two cases” involving minors. Al-Watan Arabic daily reported Friday that Al-Buluwi described prison sentences as affecting “both the convicted and the family” and constituting an added concern by placing the convicted in an environment in which “other persons with criminal records may ingrain a criminal mentality”. The judge suggested the “electronic wristband” as a beneficial alternative to prison, particularly for women and minors. “Instead of prison, it (the wristband) restricts and monitors the movement of convicted persons in their homes,” the judge said. Al-Buluwi called for a greater use of the “incredible advance of modern technology”, citing tracking and satellite systems, GSM/GPRS and Google Latitude, and added that the head of Saudi prisons Ali Al-Harithy had sought increased studies into issues such as house arrest. “Proposed applications such as these as alternatives would be truly splendid if there was a development in regulations governing sentences and their suspension and initial detention and conditions for suspended sentences and conditional release,” Al-Buluwi said. “Technology allows us to attain goals at reasonable cost and is extremely useful in punishing minors without interning them in detention centers, and the same goes for women, to support certain humanitarian considerations, or if the person is not by nature inclined to criminal activity,” he said. According to the judge, alternative sentences had the support of higher judicial authorities in the Kingdom such as the president of the Supreme Judicial Council and the Ministry of Justice. “About 98 percent of alternative sentences to prison given to minors have been successful,” he said. “They are reformative and educative in a non-prison environment, and only two failures have been seen, which were due to circumstances outside our control.” Those cases, the judge said, involved a drug addict who was interned in a rehabilitation clinic, and a qat user found in possession of large amounts of qat and who was offered reduced sentences in exchange for naming certain numbers of qat dealers. That case was supposed to be conducted in complete secrecy. “The news got leaked to the media, however,” Al-Buluwi told Al-Watan, “so it could not continue and the case was passed over to another region for judgment.”
