Judiciary’s decongestion plan key to prison reforms

In his book Long walk to Freedom, former South African President Nelson Mandela opined: “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” The global icon spent 27 years in prison before becoming South Africa’s first democratically elected President.

The constitution of Kenya guarantees every individual equal rights, regardless of gender, race, colour, creed or political belief, as well as their inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic political processes in framing the society in which they live.

The mandate of the State Department for Correctional Services includes containment and safe custody of inmates; supervision, rehabilitation, reformation and reintegration of offenders; facilitation of the administration of justice; management of young offenders in correctional institutions and youth correctional training centers; and the generation and provision of information to courts and penal institutions.

In an effort to reduce cases of recidivism, correctional services are now shifting focus to rehabilitation rather than retribution. It is this very reality that has seen the government, through Correctional Services, initiate a raft of reforms targeting the criminal justice sector to transform it into an instrument for promoting rehabilitation, empowerment and social justice.

This endeavour is, however, faced with a myriad of challenges, key among them congestion within correctional facilities. Kenya’s prison population has increased from about 50,000 three years ago to an average of 62,000 inmates while congestion has increased from 167 per cent to 206 per cent. 

Though the ratio of convicts to those in remand remains within the international best practice of 55:45, the high number of the remanded is still a matter of great concern given that they cannot be exposed to any meaningful rehabilitation regimes as they are deemed innocent until convicted.

Decongestion initiative

While Kenya’s population has continued to grow, other actors in the criminal justice system have evolved and developed in tandem with the increase. The same cannot be said of correctional services since the imperial British East Africa Company, the predecessor to the Kenya Colony, established its first prison in Fort Jesus in 1895 before moving to Nairobi in 1907.

Therefore, this week’s launch of a decongestion initiative for prisons by Chief Justice Martha Koome as part of the Judiciary’s rapid results initiative cannot be gainsaid. The programme, which will be implemented in two phases, will include review of bail and bond terms for persons in remand and confined within facilities in Nairobi region, with an initial 376 offenders set to benefit. The second phase will involve the review of sentences at the High Court.

This noble initiative marks a significant step in ongoing efforts to address the critical issues that plague our prison system and, by extension, our entire criminal justice system.

The need to have urgent and sustained interventions, to augment such efforts meant to decongest correctional institutions within the provided legal and constitutional avenues, cannot be over-emphasised.

These efforts are borne out of the realisation that the challenges we face require not just immediate action, but sustained and strategic efforts that will transform our correctional system into one that reflects the highest standards of justice and human dignity.

We simply must have a concerted effort, as all the players in the criminal justice system, to address this problem.

Dr Beacco is the principal secretary, State Department for Correctional Services