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I HAVE been following Bahrain’s prisoner reforms and note that alternative penalties are becoming available.
I believe that all prisoners should be treated with justice and fairness. In fact, housing of criminals should be improved, or abolished. Either house the prisoners in a five-star hotel style, or better, learn from the Netherlands, where prisons have been closed. Yes, all convicted people are dealt with outside prison.
As a child reading about the prisons in the Netherlands, where my mother is from, and where I spent the first 10 years of my life, prisons had TVs, carpeted rooms, hotel style; that was back in the 1960s. Currently, the Netherlands does not have a prison! Yes, you read that right.
There is a quote by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. For those that don’t know, he was a Russian author, short-story writer, essayist, and journalist. He was jailed and then put in front of a firing squad, then released. It was only to frighten him; the Czar knew him personally!
He said: “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.”
Criminals can pay restitution, serve society – they are part of society!
So, Bahrain should lead the Muslim world and close all its prisons. Criminals can be dealt with within society, they are part of society, locking people away does more harm than good to society.
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