Prison decongestion plan will fuel crime

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki’s announcement that his ministry will release inmates in a bid to reduce congestion in prisons is an extremely dangerous act and blatant admission of how clueless our government is about tackling crime. 

If prisons are congested, what has stopped Prof Kindiki, or the government as such, from building more or expanding the existing ones? Alternatively, the government can hire the private sector to build prisons for it. 

Ironically, Kenya Prisons Service has so much land that successive government agencies have ‘allowed’ its grabbing by civil servants—like the Kitale Prison case. 

The crime graph has always been on a rising trajectory since Independence; so, if no new prisons are built, congestion will definitely be the norm. To counter constantly increasing urban populations, the private sector has been building residential houses.

For far too long, maybe for lack of anything good to say, government officials, especially in correctional services, have cheated taxpayers that they release “reformed” prisoners. How does somebody who has, for years, been at the mercy of bedbugs, lice, and worm-infested bellies, sleeping on a hard cold floor, reform? 

They are served poorly cooked cold food under hostile guards. Their daily chores are demoralising punitive tasks, mostly forced. They are not even mentally fit to come to terms with what awaits them outside, especially in the current economic turmoil. 

So, the people the CS intends to release will leave prison vengeful against the very society that is expected to embrace them. They’ll come back to broken families, including remarried spouses, while others’ possessions, such as houses or land, were sold, rendering them landless. Some prisoners committed deadly robberies and their victims’ families can easily retaliate against them. 

What jobs will the ex-prisoners do to sustain themselves so that they don’t become repeat offenders—as often happens in Kenya?

Resources used

A lot of resources were used in investigating, prosecuting and jailing them; if they become repeat offenders, then that’ll be a double loss for the taxpayers. 

Some released prisoners don’t have identification documents such as identity cards or passports. Does the government expect Kenyans to be safe and employ faceless persons? Let Kindiki post them to the homes of MPs, governors, senators, MCAs and Woman Reps, not the public. 

The government should put correctional services in its own ministry with a budget to expand and rehabilitate prisoners. Inmates could be placed in technical training institutes to acquire life skills to use upon leaving prison. As free citizens, they should be assisted financially to settle in their communities. 

Robert Musamali, Nairobi