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Jordan Penal System
The penal system, a responsibility of the Ministry of Interior,
was administered by the Prisons Department of the Public Security
Directorate. The system was composed of roughly twenty-five prisons
and jails. All except Amman Central Prison--the system's major
institution--were under the management of regional police chiefs
and were sometimes referred to as police jails. In addition to the
Amman facility, area prisons were located at Irbid and at Al Jafr,
east of Maan in the south-central desert region. The smaller jails
were located at or near regional and local police offices.
Generally, convicted offenders with more than one year to serve
were transferred to the central prison in Amman, those with terms
of three months to one year were sent to regional prisons, and
those sentenced to three months or less were kept in local jails.
Some exceptions were made to this pattern in the case of
Palestinian activists or other security prisoners who had been
detained for long periods of time in the Al Jafr facility, largely
because of its remoteness.
Penal institutions were used to detain persons awaiting trial
as well as prisoners serving sentences. Convicted offenders were
usually housed separately from those yet to be tried. Major prisons
had separate sections for women prisoners, as did a few of the
police jails in the larger communities. A juvenile detention center
in Amman housed young offenders who had been convicted of criminal
offenses. When juveniles reached the age of nineteen, if they had
further time to serve, they were transferred to one of the larger
prisons for the remainder of their sentences.
All institutions operated in accordance with the provisions of
the Prison Law of 1953, as amended. This law provided for decent
treatment of prisoners and included comprehensive regulations
governing the facilities, care, and administration of the prison
system. Jordan was one of the first Arab countries to recognize the
theory of rehabilitation, rather than retribution, as the basis for
punishment of lawbreakers. This concept emphasized that crime was
caused by human weakness resulting from poor social conditions
rather than by willfulness and immorality. As such, the approach
was in many ways alien to the traditional Muslim custom of personal
revenge by the family of the victim, which demanded that the
culprit pay for his crime. Although Jordan's penal system was
designed to provide punishments suited to bring about the
rehabilitation of the wrongdoers, in practice these efforts were
hampered by the lack of facilities and professionally trained
staff. Some effort was made to provide literacy and limited
industrial training classes to prisoners in Amman Central Prison,
but few modern techniques of rehabilitation were found in other
penal institutions.
According to the annual human rights reports of the United
States Department of State, prison conditions were harsh but not
intentionally degrading. There appeared to be no discrimination
according to religion or social class in treatment of prisoners.
Crowded conditions in some prisons were relieved by a royal amnesty
in 1985 that resulted in the release of more than 1,000 inmates. In
1986, a new central prison, Juwaidah, was opened in Amman. It
replaced the obsolete and cramped Al Mahatta prison, which was
scheduled to be closed.
In its 1988 report, Amnesty International cited a number of
cases of apparent mistreatment in prisons, notably at Al Mahatta
and at the Az Zarqa military prison. The report also questioned the
authorities' motives in forcing four students and a writer
convicted in the martial law court of membership in illegal leftist
organizations to serve their sentences under the harsh conditions
found at Al Jafr.
* * *
The general survey of Jordan by Arthur R. Day, East
Bank/West Bank: Jordan and the Prospects for Peace, includes a
chapter appraising the Jordanian military establishment, as well as
a number of observations relative to Jordan's internal security.
The analysis by Anthony H. Cordesman, Jordanian Arms and the
Middle East Balance, published in 1983, together with a
supplement published in 1985, provides assessments of the military
and geostrategic situation of Jordan. The analyses also present
arguments for equipping Jordanian forces with advanced weapons to
enable the country to resist military pressure from neighboring
powers. The problems Jordan encountered with the United States in
meeting its desire for these new weapons, especially in the area of
air defense, are also reviewed in detail. The Hashemite Arab
Army, 1908-1979, by S.A. El-Edroos, a Pakistani brigadier who
served as adviser to the Jordan Arab Army, is a thorough study of
military operations and battles through the October 1973 War. John
Bagot Glubb's autobiography, A Soldier with the Arabs,
provides detail on the evolution of the Arab Legion and the
fighting in 1948. Troubles on the East Bank: Challenges to the
Domestic Stability of Jordan by Robert B. Satloff reviews
existing and potential internal security problems, with emphasis on
the Muslim Brotherhood.
The discussion of military strengths, formations, and equipment
in this chapter is based principally on estimates compiled in
The Military Balance, 1988-89, by the International
Institute for Strategic Studies in London. (For further information
and complete citations,
see Jordan -
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1989
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