Decongest our prisons

Kenyan jails are congested. While the Constitution stipulates that a person shall not be remanded in custody if the offence committed is punishable by a fine only or by imprisonment for not more than six months, there are more than 20,000 inmates in Kenyan jails serving sentences less than a month.

This tends to strain the meagre resources available.

This clearly should not be the case. Offenders arrested for minor infractions or even inability to pay fines as low as Sh500 find themselves in confinement together with hard-core criminals and murderers.

In several instances, some of these petty offenders left prison worse off than they went in. It behoves agencies involved with the criminal justice system to put their heads together and device means of decongesting our prisons.

It would help if, for instance, offenders who commit crimes that attract sentences of less than six months imprisonment are committed to civil jail and community service overseen by either probation officers as provided for in law or by chiefs.

The question of lack of probation officers is one the Government should address urgently because their role in rehabilitating petty criminals cannot be gainsaid.

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