If this is how women are treated in police cells, then ours is a truly broken society

Photo credit: Pool

What you need to know:

  • Did they mean that nothing would be done if an incident like that would occur?


  • Second, is the fact that several times, from stories I have heard from horses’ mouths, the policemen are quite often the ones who cause the said incidents.

The police officer walked me into a cell at the police station and told me that I would be spending the night there as a guest of the state. He also felt it was important to inform me that the other sole occupant in the room was “a mad woman”, but I shouldn’t be worried, because she was not the “bad kind” who would attack me. She would be going to hospital the next day, anyway. I, of course, was quaking in my boots, and wondering how long I could last in a cell that smelled slightly of piss. But exponentially more worrying, there was an almost too loud sound of scurrying inside the cubicle, which I assumed could only be caused by rats.

In case it still isn’t obvious, I was almost arrested over the weekend. I mean, I was kind of arrested. That first paragraph was not just a bad dream, even though it felt like a nightmare to me at the time. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I definitely got closer to remand time than I would have liked, especially considering the facts that everyone knows what happens when you get arrested at the weekend – you’re not going anywhere till the week starts again on Monday, and your only form of entertainment will be provided by your roommates. I guess you could call it a retreat?

A few days have passed since and although I would like to make light of it and pretend that I was strong and confident that someone would come to save me the whole time, I really wasn’t. I truly do fear the Kenyan police, and every story I hear about them makes me fear them even more. My personal experiences with them do nothing to quell my fears – not as a Kenyan, and definitely not as a woman.

For example, as my lawyer negotiated about whether or not I had actually broken the law outside, the two cops standing watch over me and a potential fellow inmate inside played good cop bad cop, to my great distress. One said if it were up to him, he would have released us ages ago. The other said we shouldn’t stand in the hallway, because there were male prisoners in the building and all kinds of things could happen to us if we stayed there.

There are two ironic things in that statement, both equally disturbing: One, that an assault on us could happen right under the watch of the policemen. They were standing there and there is, obviously, always an officer there the whole night. Did they mean that nothing would be done if an incident like that would occur? Second, is the fact that several times, from stories I have heard from horses’ mouths, the policemen are quite often the ones who cause the said incidents.

Because I am writing this now, on a Monday, I am clearly not still a guest of the state, but it makes me wonder. It makes me worried about the women who are in any cell across the country. What are the conditions like, for those who do not have lawyers or loved ones who worry about them, their only defence being flawed laws that don’t hold up in the face of a uniformed goon’s opinion? When police use scare tactics on people they are meant to serve and protect, what does that mean for those who are supposed to trust that the boys in blue have their best interests at heart? What justice, truly, can be served if the ones investigating above board behaviour on the force are either both useless and toothless, or are actively and enthusiastically perpetuating the rot?

I have no answers for you this week, only contemplation and diatribe. Because if what I witnessed is but the tip of the iceberg where the state of women and prisons in Kenya is concerned, then the world as we know it is – and continues to be – broken beyond comprehension.