| dc.description.abstract | The problem of crime in Kenya is reported to be worsening and it needs to be addressed in the most effective way especially by the Government of Kenya. The imprisonment approach has continued to be used as a major way of rehabilitating offenders in the hope of reducing if not eliminating the crime problem. Some critics of the approach argue that prisons have not achieved their objective of rehabilitating offenders since there is increase in crime rates both in the rural and the urban settings where most crimes are reported to be committed by offenders who have been imprisoned more than once. Our prisons are also filled by this category of offenders. This implies that there is a problem in the functioning of the Prisons Service.
The mass media highlights a few reforms in the Prisons Service mainly focusing on the improvements in the living conditions of inmates. However, little (if any) appears to be reported on the conditions of the prison officers, yet the officers have a major stake in the alleged failure of the Prisons Service. There is limited information on the factors undermining the effectiveness of prison officers in the rehabilitation of offenders due to the long history of closed boundaries of prisons.
It was therefore against this background that the main objective of this study was to examine the factors undermining the effectiveness of prison officers in the rehabilitation of offenders. The study assumed that constraints/problems in the work environment of prison officers affected the officers' effectiveness in the rehabilitation of offenders. It also assumed that prisons were not effective in the rehabilitation of offenders in Kenya.
To achieve the objectives of the study, a research was conducted among ex-prisoners living in Taita Taveta district in the Coast Province of the Republic of Kenya and prison officers working in the four prisons in the district. The district was chosen as the study site mainly for its convenience and advantage to the researcher especially in terms of increased mobility and easier tracing of the key respondents since he resides in the district. The survey was the primary method of data collection. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected using interview schedules consisting of fixed and open-
ended-questions administered in mainly structured face-to-face individual interviews. A sample of 120 ex-prisoners drawn from the district's former large divisions of Wundanyi, Voi, Mwatate and Taveta, a sample of 60 ordinary prison officers in warder and chief officer grade and four heads of prisons (to make 64 prison officers) drawn from the four prisons namely Manyani, Wundanyi, Voi and Taveta was utilized. Purposive, snowball/mud ball and convenience sampling methods were used in this study. More data was also collected through the unstructured approach interviews, direct and simple observation of phenomena and review of relevant secondary data materials such as theses and books. The quantitative data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer package while the qualitative data were analyzed manually.
A major result in this study was that most ex-prisoner respondents had been imprisoned more than once as evidenced by the high rate of recidivism of 66.7 per cent. The prisons were also dominated by inmates convicted of petty offences who also believed that they were serving prison sentences for offences they had not committed. Most of the respondents in this study argued that prisons lacked essential financial, physical infrastructural and human resources for rehabilitation of offenders and that problems in the other components of the Criminal Justice System affected the Prisons Service negatively. The study concluded that the Prisons Service was not effective and that there were factors undermining the effectiveness of prison officers in the rehabilitation of offenders. The key factors were found to be inadequate financial, physical infrastructural
and human resources.
This study recommends that prisons be maintained but be well funded and equipped with the necessary financial, physical and human resources in order to cater for only serious offenders. There is also need for constitutional, prison and penal reforms to be undertaken in order to improve the coordination of all the departments in the Criminal Justice System possibly by putting them under one ministry. The reforms could also be undertaken to adequately finance, equip and mandate the Community Service Orders (CSO) and Probation and After Care Services Department to handle the rehabilitation of
all petty offenders who currently constitute the majority of today's prison population. | en |
