Govt looking to end natural life imprisonment
Published on: Tuesday, March 21, 2023
By:
FMT, Jason Thomas
Deputy law and institutional reforms minister Ramkarpal Singh said the natural life sentence will be replaced with a jail term that will be capped. (File pic)
PETALING JAYA: The government is looking at doing away with the punishment of imprisonment for natural life, said deputy law and institutional reforms minister Ramkarpal Singh.
Ramkarpal said the natural life sentence will be replaced with a prison sentence for a certain period which will be capped.
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“This will be discussed and debated in Parliament in the coming week or so,” he said on BFM’s The Breakfast Grille this morning.
“So, it’s no longer a case of where a person dies in prison. There will be a cap, a maximum term of imprisonment.
“Natural life (sentences) will be done away with.”
He was asked for his thoughts on the potential of further overcrowding at prisons once the mandatory death sentence for 11 crimes is abolished.
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Ramkarpal said a bill to repeal the mandatory death penalty will be tabled for its first reading at the Dewan Rakyat this month. It is expected to be passed in April and gazetted in May.
A moratorium on the execution of the death penalty has been in place since 2018.
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Last June, the government announced that it had agreed to abolish the mandatory death penalty and give judges discretionary powers in sentencing.
Ramkarpal said the abolition of the mandatory death penalty would likely see some prisoners who have served part of their sentence being released, thus easing congestion in prisons to a certain extent.
“A number of them would be, I suppose, released in the event the court replaces their death sentence with a prison term,” he said.
“Quite a few of them have been in prison for many years. Normally, how it works is, the courts will deduct a certain amount or period of time from their actual prison sentence.
“So, I would imagine that a number of them would be eligible or entitled to be released in the event their death sentences are replaced with imprisonment in the near future.”
There are currently 1,320 death row inmates in the country.
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