Khaberni - Jordan saved 552 women over two years with its advanced criminal policy from prison sentences due to their first life error, and they found an alternative to serve their sentence outside prison walls, maintaining their families and livelihood, and not destroying their families, while getting a new opportunity in life to correct their path by an alternative punishment that achieves justice, deterrence, and protection all at once.
Official data from the Ministry of Justice for the years 2024-2025 regarding the executed alternative punishments show that the number of beneficiaries reached 5,237, including 4,685 males and 552 females, and the locations for implementing the alternative punishment varied across 21 entities.
With concern to not disclose any information or details that would identify the individual serving an alternative punishment or the location of their work, in accordance with the law that ensures personal protection, the Ministry of Justice achieves the primary goal of alternative punishments: protecting the family from breakdown, maintaining its provider, and giving non-repeat offenders another chance to correct their path, avoiding mixing with habitual and dangerous criminals, and reducing the financial burden on the state from their potential incarceration.
Referring to the judicial search engine (Qistas), it shows that some individuals who received judicial sentences for alternative punishments were initially sentenced to three years in prison after assaulting someone and endangering their life. With the personal right waived, the alternative punishment became another option after the court was convinced and the legal texts were applicable, where he was assigned to serve at a mosque affiliated with the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs.
In another case, there was a girl in her twenties, lacking family support, who committed a crime for the first time and a personal right was waived. She wasn't a repeat offender; hence, her punishment was replaced with an alternative one at a department affiliated with the Greater Amman Municipality, where she had a talent for drawing, benefiting children for about 55 hours at a rate of nearly 5 hours per day.
Those sentenced carried out their alternative punishments at local administrations – joint service councils, vocational training institutions, and ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Health, Social Development, Youth, Awqaf and Islamic Affairs, Education, Tourism and Antiquities, Labor, the Greater Amman Municipality, the Greater Salt Municipality, the Public Security Directorate, Zaha Cultural Center, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, the University of Jordan, Prince Al Hussein bin Talal, and Aqaba for Technology and Sciences.
The figures show that the implementation of punishments after mid-2025 was particularly concentrated at entities that provide public benefit services as an alternative to community service, with multiple sites for execution, including the Ministry of Agriculture, local administration – joint service councils in the governorates of the capital, Zarqa, Balqa, Irbid, Jerash, Karak, Health, and Environment.
According to the provisions of the law, the number of hours each sentenced individual must serve, according to paragraph 3 of Article 25 Duplicated of the Penal Code, which specified that in determining the duration of alternatives to liberty-depriving punishments, they must be no less than a third of the substituted term for the liberty-depriving punishment and not exceed it, and that community service alternative involves unpaid work for the community for a duration determined by the court of not less than 50 hours at a rate of five hours per day.
The first paragraph of Article 25 Duplicated states that the court in misdemeanors and in felonies where the punishment handed down is temporary labor or temporary detention not exceeding three years except in repeat offense cases, and based on the social case report and taking each lawsuit's circumstances into consideration, may replace, upon issuing judgment or after it becomes final, the sentenced punishment with one or more alternatives of liberty-depriving punishments.
Justice Minister Bassam Talhouni said these alternative punishments and their applications, along with the stories of these cases and the circumstances of their individuals, form a specialized and advanced policy, offering a humane chance first to the person who committed a first-time error, given them a choice to amend themselves, benefit from the error and not repeat it, staying away from prison and mixing with habitual and other dangerous criminals.
He indicated that the Jordanian legislator has made this amendment to the Penal Code, and with the sensory impact studies we monitor with the application of these legal articles, it indicates that this policy has achieved its goals, and its expansion is important so that justice is served for all, giving the errant person a chance to deal with his life and community.
Talhouni also pointed out that some of the stories that were dealt with were significantly humane, allowing alternative punishments to protect university students, women, and family heads from entering prison for years, and they avoided much of the distress that could destroy homes and families because of an error made by a family member, who may be the mainstay and sole provider of the family.
Professor of Jurisprudence and its Fundamentals, Mustafa Esayefan, told the Jordanian News Agency that Islamic Sharia aligns with the principle of alternative punishments in Jordan within the framework of discretionary punishments, which allow the judge a wide discretionary authority to determine the appropriate punishment in a way that achieves public and private benefit, excluding crimes that Sharia specifies fixed punishments for.
He added that this occurs by several principles, with discretionary authority being prominent where the judge in Islamic jurisprudence holds considerable authority in determining the type and amount of punishment in discretionary crime cases, which are the majority of crimes applicable under the alternative punishment system in Jordan, such as simple misdemeanors, with the aim to achiev
