Deputy Home Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung said among other schemes that had already been implemented was transferring prisoners from overcrowded prisons to less congested prisons.

"The Prisons Department is also studying several concepts, such as the social service programmes, home detention and suspended sentences to reduce overcrowding in our prisons.

"Those who will be chosen to undergo these programmes are prisoners imposed with light sentences and who have not caused a danger to society," he told Datuk Dr Mohd Shahrom Osman (BN-Lipis) in Parliament on Wednesday.

Chor also said several new prisons would be built under the allocations provided in the Ninth Malaysia Plan, in which the national capacity of prisoners would be increased from 37,717 to 40,000 prisoners.

- The Star -