Kingdom
Alternative Sentences: 1001 Rulings Issued Since the New Law’s Entry into Force
These sentences are distributed as follows: 490 day-fines, 330 community service sentences, and 245 sentences involving the restriction of certain rights or the imposition of surveillance measures. Electronic monitoring was applied in only 12 cases.
The President of the Court of Cassation and Deputy President of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, Mohamed Abdennabaoui, emphasized on Tuesday in Rabat that, since the new law on alternative sentences entered into force on August 8th last year and through the end of 2025, the Kingdom’s courts have issued 1,001 rulings concerning 1,077 individuals.
In a speech on the occasion of the opening of the 2026 judicial year, Mr. Abdennabaoui specified that these sentences are distributed as follows: 490 day-fines (45%), 330 community service sentences (31%), and 245 sentences involving the restriction of certain rights or the imposition of surveillance, treatment, or rehabilitation measures (23%). The use of electronic monitoring was applied in only 12 cases, representing 1% of the rulings issued.
Regarding the monitoring of the execution of these sentences, Mr. Abdennabaoui reported 20 breaches observed, of which 13 were related to community service, one case pertained to electronic monitoring, and another concerned the violation of control measures, noting that five individuals committed other criminal offenses during the execution of their alternative sentence.
He added that 31 convicted persons refused to comply with the execution of the imposed sanction, among whom 21 were subject to day-fines and 10 to restrictions of rights or control measures, specifying that these are approximate data presented for the first time and will be the subject of an in-depth study to draw the necessary lessons for guiding penal policy, considering the security, social, and economic benefits that alternative sentences present.
The Kingdom’s courts continued, over the past year, their distinguished performance, both in terms of quantity and the improvement of the quality of judgments, the judicial official stated, indicating that during the year 2025, a total of 4,056,066 new cases were registered before these courts, to which were added 577,851 cases carried over from 2024, thus bringing the total number of pending cases to 4,633,917.
In this context, he noted that the courts were able to adjudicate 4,117,592 cases in 2025, leaving a backlog of 506,074 files.
