This paper aims to show the crisis of contemporary criminal systems, however legislative excess of stipulating the penalty of imprisonment, as a penalty depriving freedom, while sometimes stipulating the penalty of imprisonment is mandatory, rather combining it with other penalties, and more than that, depriving the judge of his discretionary power in determining the punishment, this threatens the theory of individualized punishment in a fatal way, so as a result, prisons are overcrowded with inmates, which places a heavy burden on the state from an economic perspective that exhausts and drains its budget, while there is also a social cost of the prison sentence, paid by the prisoner’s family and close circle, moreover the greatest cost is the failure of the penal system to perform its role towards the prisoner by reforming and rehabilitating, therefore, this paper focuses on presenting the causes of the problem and its negative repercussions, trying to find some solutions, by presenting alternatives to the prison sentence, while expanding the view to include some criminal systems, such as the Islamic criminal system and its decision on the penalty of exile.

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