The Effect of Prisons Law No. (396) of 1956 on the Penitentiary Policy in Egypt:
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The 1956 Law cannot be regarded as an internal law only concerned with the organization of prisons without affecting or being affected by other legislations. This legislation elaborated what the Penal Code No. (58) of 1937 had summed up; it also modified and amended some of its provisions.
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For instance, Article (14) of Penal Code stating that "Hard labor sentence entails that the sentenced persons should do the hardest works that the government specifies for their lifetime if the sentence is life-imprisonment, or for the sentence period if it was temporary imprisonment". Meanwhile, Article 21 of Prisons Law No. (396) of 1956 has completed this context elaborating that " types of works to be done by prisoners sentenced with: hard-labor, imprisonment or confinement, are determined by a resolution issued by the Minister of Interior in consultation with the Minister of Justice".Such works were organized by the Minister of Interior Decree No. (73) of 1959, as modified by Decree No. (10807) of 1997, issued in consultation with the Minister of Justice to identify the works to be done by persons sentenced with hard-work, imprisonment or confinement; either in the field of agriculture, cargos, crafts, storage... etc. All such crafts are done by free individuals in their everyday life, and are organized by syndicates which care about their workers' rights and there were no single complaint about such crafts for being hard or violating human rights.
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Another landmark of this legislative reform lies in the rules of parole applied on those who are finally sentenced with a freedom- depriving penalty if they stayed 3/4 of the sentence period in prison- provided that it is not less than nine months- and whose behavior was trustworthy while being in prison unless their release may cause any harm to public security. If the penalty is life hard-work imprisonment, it is not allowed to release the sentenced persons until they spend at least twenty years in prison.
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This reveals that the Egyptian Law had cancelled the hard-work penalty in practice, and also cancelled the absolute context of making the punishment for lifetime.
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Article (57) authorized the Minister of Justice to specify the conditions which the prisoner should meet in order to be released. If he does not abide by such conditions the release is to be cancelled by an order issued by the Prisons Sector General Director at the request of the Chief Prosecutor and the prisoner is returned back to prison to complete the remaining period of the sentence he ought to serve.
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Such contexts illustrate the provisions on parole included in the administrative decree issued by the Prisons General Director in accordance with the conditions stipulated by law in that regard.
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It is also worth mentioning that the Ministry of Interior has adopted new mechanisms that follow humanitarian point of view in developing the methods of punishment enforcement in prisons.
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In that regard, the Minister of Interior ordered the establishment of a joint committee presided over by the Prisons Sector and including representatives of the Ministry competent authorities. The committee meets monthly, discusses the cases of the prisoners who meet parole criteria in accordance with article (86) of Prisons Law internal regulation; which stipulates the necessity of security bodies’ approval when adopting parole decisions regarding perpetrators of some offences, especially those sentenced with long-term sentences in general and hard-labor life penalty in particular. The number of prisoners (sentenced with hard-labor life penalty) released by this committee mounted to 142 prisoners. This is considered a leap in the mechanisms of punishment enforcement in prisons and a victory to the reform point of view prevailing nowadays.
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A third landmark of this reform is related to prisoners' categories. Article (13) of Prisons Law stated that: "the sentenced must be divided into not less than three categories", and illustrated the means of treatment and living conditions of each category based on the proposal of the Prisons General Director and the consent of the Public Prosecutor.
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The prisons strategy is based on enforcing provisions of Prisons Law and its executive regulation on one hand and the four major axes it includes on the other. Those axes are:
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- Security.
- Care.
- Rehabilitation.
- Human rights.
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