The Whole Jailing System

For thousands of years, jails/prisons (what’s the difference?!) were the main tool used to punish criminals and protect society from their mischief. To protect society, taking a felon’s freedom would seem appropriate. However, as a punishment, jailing is not always the best means. Jails are famous for graduating criminals. Sometimes a rather naive crime (e.g. driving without a licence, using drugs once or twice) would turn the detainee into a criminal, as s/he would interact with other real criminals – and “من عاشر قوماً أربعين يوما صار منهم” (an Arabic saying meaning whoever socializes with a tribe for 40 days becomes one of them).

If you’d like a real idea of what goes on in the Omani jail of Al-Rumais, then read the posts by الملاح التائه here.

Unfortunately it’s in Arabic, so English readers you can just copy-paste the contents to Google translate, it’ll give you an idea of what the guy is talking about.

Basically he’s an ex-convict great at describing his story within Oman’s 3 jails (1 for serious crimes, 1 for not-so-serious: criminals admitted for 3 yrs or less, and 1 for women only). With all due respect, his story highlights a number of deficiencies in the Omani jailing system, deficiencies that also exist in prisons all over the world, and which consequently generate disturbing scandals (rapes, drugs, rapes again).

In addition to “jails not doing any good”, jails also “steal” a lot of manpower from the country! Those prisoner minds and bodies could be assigned more useful roles than just lying around waiting for their release in 10-15 years. I know prisoners have to sometimes clean, do the gardening, carry stuff etc.; but that’s not really utilizing the “best in them”.

So in your view, what’s the solution? Should governments discard the system all together? Or should they still exist with some major changes? What could these changes be?

It’s strange that we rarely hear about jails during the prophet’s (SAAW) life. I know lots of crimes had certain punishments (e.g. Killing is punishable by execution, committing adultery while married is punishable by stoning till death; stealing is punishable by cutting off the burglar’s hand etc.), but those don’t cover ALL crimes. In my view, jails still must exist. But how?!

Currently, around the globe, some countries do stand out due to their phenomenal treatment of detainees. Take Dubai as an example. Prisoners enter normal jails, but if a prisoner memorizes the Quran then they’re free to go! In their view, a person who has memorized the Quran means that they’ve read advice and good instructions so many times that it’ll be extremely difficult for them to go back to their crime. It might be a good solution for some, but this doesn’t necessarily always work. Plus, what about non-Muslims? Would you force them to memorize the Quran as well, while they’re not even allowed to touch it (as some say)?

A completely different example is the Philippines. Have a look at this video:

Prisoners are taught to dance together! They call it “Dancing, the non-violent approach to rehabilitation”. I wonder if it really works?

Having said that, What do you think? How can jails become more effective in stopping crimes forever? What strategies can be used inside jails to stop corruption and wasting of human resources? Give me your views!