KAJANG: The Home Ministry is studying the possibility of having the imprisonment period of foreigner convicts split, whereby they spend part of their incarceration time here and the balance in their home countries.

Its deputy minister Datuk Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh said this would help reduce costs as the government was incurring RM50,000 a day in expenditure for each 2,000 foreign prisoners, which included the cost for food, clothing and utilities.

This translates to about RM55 per prisoner per day.

“The proposed system is still at the discussion stage and will be tabled in the cabinet to enable the Prisons Act 1995 to be amended and negotiations with the countries concerned to take place,” he told reporters after closing a prisons management course which was attended by 228 participants at the Prisons Training Institute here yesterday.

Wan Ahmad Farid said the system would need the approval of the countries involved and that Malaysia would reciprocate the same (share imprisonment time of Malaysians jailed abroad) to make it successful.

“As an example, if a Malaysian receives a jail sentence in Australia for eight years and he has been held there for two years, the remaining six years can be done here,” he said, adding that the system would not apply where the death sentence is imposed.

Asked how many Malaysians were serving time abroad, Wan Ahmad Farad the number was in excess of 100.

— Bernama