house arrest act draft approved to ease prison overcrowding
The Cabinet has approved drafting a House Arrest Act that would allow courts to place eligible remand detainees under electronic monitoring at home until their trial.
Source: The Rakyat Post · September 21, 2026 at 10:08 PM · AI-assisted report
Single-sourceKUALA LUMPUR, 22 SEPTEMBER 2026 —
The Cabinet has approved drafting a House Arrest Act that would allow courts to place eligible remand detainees under electronic monitoring at home until their trial.
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The proposal, first raised by Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail in 2024, comes as Malaysia’s 41 prisons hold about 93,000 inmates against a capacity of 75,000. Saifuddin said the act would target remand detainees—those charged but denied or unable to post bail—while excluding serious criminal cases.
In a video posted on Facebook, Saifuddin explained that under the bill, eligible detainees would receive modern monitoring devices to track their movements. He noted that the idea has been in discussion for almost two years and that no law currently exists on house arrest. The cabinet’s in‑principle approval allows the Home Ministry to draft and table the bill in Parliament.
The move follows earlier community‑based initiatives by the Prisons Department, such as parole, compulsory attendance orders and licensed prisoner release, which aim to reduce prison numbers. Since 2008, the department has targeted having two‑thirds of eligible inmates in rehabilitation programmes by 2030, but those measures have applied only to convicted prisoners, not to those awaiting trial.
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