Ministry of Justice has forwarded a new project bill concerning the adoption of “electronic bracelet” to the government General Secretariat, as alterative to freedom-depriving penalties, after some observations were made and included by Public Prosecutor’s Office, Human Rights National Council, General Commissioner for Prison Administration and Re-integration, DGNS and Supreme Command of the Gendarmerie Royal
According to the introductory memo of the project bill, Moroccan penal justice is in need for an upheaval, deep and comprehensive reforms that are susceptible to bring about some effective solutions to many problems and shortcomings in the entire judiciary apparatus and penal codes in general.
Adoption of alternative punishments has come as a result of a number of challenges and negative aspects created by freedom-depriving penalties; as the new project bill was brought in on the ground of broad consultations with various active jurist players and out of the awareness of the importance of those alternatives.
Ministry of Justice has stressed that what encourages this orientation is statistics and data regarding jail populations which have showed that about half of prisoners were sentenced to less than a year imprisonment, in terms of figures as of 2020, those penalties have constituted 44.97%; that’s why adoption of electronic monitoring is amid the Ministry’s orientation to adopt alternative penalties project bill, in the context of new kinds of trans-national organized crime, internationalization of penal background, human rights and freedoms scope, and implementation of international agreements.
The bill draft has referred to the fact that e-monitoring system is one of those alternatives for freedom-depriving penalties and so will help avoid disadvantages of short term sentences and therefore a prisoner will be liberated but will be subject to many commitments, including controlling him electronically after he/she will be obliged to wear an e-bracelet either in his hand, foot, or in his body part in a way that would make it easier to monitor his movement inside territorial borders defined by the judge in charge of applying penalties.
The project bill text has disclosed all technical details about wearing e-bracelet, its costs imposed on the prisoners, the sides responsible for its monitoring and reporting to be submitted to the concerned judge who could bring interested prisoners to a medical check-up to make sure of any health impact left by the e-bracelet.