The Probation and After Care services have greatly helped to decongest prisons, with the number of prisoners now almost standing at par with those serving non-custodial sentences, Principal Secretary for Correctional Services Dr Salome Beacco has said.
Speaking in Siaya town where she presided over the official opening of staff houses at the Siaya Female Probation hostels, Beacco said that currently, prisons countrywide have approximately 60,000 inmates, the same as those serving non-custodial sentences under the Probation Services.
The PS said that a number of years ago, the number of persons serving custodial sentences was double the number that was serving community corrections.
“This is a testament of the effectiveness of community corrections,” she said adding “when you have too many people being incarcerated, you destroy the most basic unit of the society.
Beacco said that the State Department for Correction and After Care Services was working with other stakeholders to strengthen the participation of community in rehabilitating the offenders and has come up with the concept of community probation volunteers that is currently being piloted in four counties.
The volunteers, she said, are community opinion shapers who help the officers to understand the relationship between the community and the offender and also help counsel the offender to make it easier to reintegrate.
“We are more or less trying to do what we used to do traditionally before the concept of prisons came up – that the community is the one that solved problems in the society,” said Beacco who was flanked by Siaya County Commissioner Nobert Komora and his deputy, Robert Ng’etich, among others.
Beacco however warned that not everyone may fit in the category that benefits from community service adding that serious offenders such as those convicted of murder, robbery with violence, etc., will have to be incarcerated.
Siaya Female Probation hostel, the principal secretary said, is one of its kind in the country and serves female probation offenders who are either accompanied by their children or are pregnant.
“It is a safe house of some sort where offenders can be rehabilitated,” she said adding “Their offences range from child neglect, neglect of family, petty offences like chang’aa brewing, etc., which is predominantly caused by poverty.”
