How the system fixes our women

It was hard to miss her from the crowd. She was the most cheerful, engaging in animated discussions with the rest.

She was there whiling away in her striped uniform, missing her three “little ones”, as she put it. She was young, angry, full of energy and hunger. Angry that she can do little to help herself. Hungry to do something worthwhile with her life, if ever she walks out of the jail man’s gates.

“She doesn’t belong here,” I told myself.

You see, Mercy (not her real name) is in prison. Her crime: she was arrested while selling vegetables at Archer’s Post, one of the trading centres in Isiolo County. The judge gave the option of a Sh100,000 fine or one-year jail term in default.

Obviously, she couldn’t raise the fine and now here she is devastated at the thought of lost time. That really is not her worry, it is the plight of her three little children. “Who feeds them; who clothes them; who washes them; who checks their homework when they return home from school?” You can see her wrestle hard with these.

On merit, her case, I believe, is one of failed justice. Those three children will grow up detesting the law and the judicial process.

In a country where those suspected to have stolen billions walk the streets free, the incarceration of Mercy makes a mockery of our justice system.

Not to excuse Mercy’s acts, I have read somewhere that where the law is inconsistent with logic, the latter prevails.

Yet that is the reality. It is the reality afflicting hundreds of thousand of women and men, mostly women inside our prisons, and sometimes at homes where the women are emasculated psychologically and materially.

This is how I came across Mercy, on the International Day of Women. I was the chief guest at the GK Prisons in Isiolo. I tell you what, I have never seen anything like it anywhere. Unlike other prisons I have visited, this one was like a mixed gender school where both men and women inmates stayed in the same facility, but in different quarters. You enjoy the camaraderie.

I had time to interact with many of them. My heart melted. They were a cheerful bunch of people. You couldn’t miss the remorse in their eyes, the urge to get things right if ever they were let out.

It is not hard to sympathise with them. After mingling with them and hearing what had put them in jail, I came to the conclusion that most offenders are actually not supposed to be in jail.

Other than in the obvious cases, I am inclined to believe that one way to decongest our prisons is to get the systems working. For example, in Mercy’s case, had the authorities provided shades for small-scale traders, perhaps we wouldn’t have to worry about her. Our worry would be to get her to pay taxes.

I am thinking of an ideal world where everything works well.

Look at it this way; imagine if the roads were well marked, well designed, well planned, and that the public transport was orderly and well managed, we wouldn’t have to overlap or fight at the roundabouts or have to develop maniacal behaviour on the road, thereby risking a fine or a day lost in a congested Kibera Law Court.

In other words, if processes and procedure helped to fix things, we wouldn’t have to worry much.

My heart bleeds when I think of the many Mercys in our midsts. Mercy, like all women out there, want the best for their children, for their families.

They, like those who are routinely hauled onto those City County trucks have just been let down by a system that is top-centric, that looks at how deep your pockets are before offering service. I am sure if Mercy had a lawyer, she would have come out with a slap on her wrist. In fact, maybe a Sh500 fine.

When, like many women, you feel that the system is constantly rigged against you, it is not hard to give hope. As leaders, our role is to give that hope to them. To make them believe that it can get better.

Young girls growing up in windswept villages across the country should hope and look forward to a better future. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in this year’s US elections, says she is running so that fathers can tell their children it is possible to be President of the world’s most powerful nation. I totally agree.

On Mercy, I am aware the Power of Mercy Advisory Committee (PMAC) chaired by the Attorney General is making recommendations to the Head of State for female inmates to be considered for pardon. Mercy is one such deserving case.

The PMAC criteria for Presidential pardon include prisoners who have served long sentences and have reformed.

Others are prisoners who got long jail sentences at an early age, sentences that have denied them rights to have families.