Two Bills Replace Prison Work With Training

TDT | Manama

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Two government-drafted bills passed by Parliament on Tuesday will replace compulsory work linked to prison sentences with rehabilitation and training, after MPs were told the aim was to strip out wording that could be read as permitting forced labour as a punishment and to keep Bahrain’s laws in line with its international obligations.

Hassan Bukhammas, chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and National Security Committee, said during the sitting that the two measures came after remarks from the International Labour Organisation on parts of Bahrain’s legislation. He said they would ‘remove any legislative clash caused by some wording’ and bring out ‘the reform aims of punishment’ through greater weight on rehabilitation and reintegration.

Bukhammas said the shift from ‘prisons’ to ‘reform and rehabilitation centres’ also brings the Penal Code into line with newer law, chiefly Law No. 18 of 2014, which replaced the old Prisons Law of 1964. The change, he said, ‘strengthens the reform-based and humane approach in dealing with inmates’.

One bill, attached to Decree No. 68 of 2025, rewrites Article 55 of the Penal Code so that people serving custodial sentences are assigned rehabilitation and training programmes in reform and rehabilitation centres instead of prison work. It also swaps references to ‘prison’ and ‘prisons’ in the relevant provisions for ‘reform and rehabilitation centre’ and ‘reform and rehabilitation centres’.

The second bill, attached to Decree No. 69 of 2025, amends Article 18 of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution Law of 2014 so that inmates, apart from remand detainees and those unfit on health grounds, must take part in rehabilitation and training programmes rather than compulsory work. It also changes related wording elsewhere in the law, including references to employment, income from work and work reward.

The two bills were drawn up after remarks by the ILO and its Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations on legal texts allowing compulsory labour alongside prison terms. The explanatory note says this runs against Convention No. 105 on the abolition of forced labour, which Bahrain joined in 1998.