State focuses on non-custodial sentencing and rehabilitation measures

PHILIP ONYANGO- KNA

The Government is committed to strengthening measures that advance restorative justice and expand community-based corrections, the Principal Secretary for Correctional Services, Dr Salome Beacco has said.

With more than 60,000 offenders serving non-custodial sentences countrywide, the PS said Kenya is one of the global leaders dvancing community driven correctional services.

This has resulted into greater community acceptance and integration of offenders into the society, she said.

In a speech read on her behalf by the Acting Probation and Aftercare Services Secretary, Shadrack Kavutai, during the International day for community volunteers in Siaya, Beacco said Kenya is committed to building partnerships that align the country’ practices to international standards.

“The United Nations rules on non-custodial measures remind us that community participation is essential in fostering rehabilitation, reintegration and preventing re-offending,” she said adding “Kenya has taken this message to its heart.”

The PS said that the Probation and Aftercare Services, through partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA, has trained and formally appointed 604 Community Volunteer Probation officers who play a critical role to reduce recidivism.

“Through their dedicated service, we are witnessing enough supervision outcomes, greater community acceptance and more integration of offenders into the society,” Dr Beacco said.

She lamented that stigma still remains one of the greatest barriers to re-integration.

“When society labels and excludes, it creates the very conditions that lead to re-offending but when the society embraces, it creates avenue for change,” she said, adding that justice must be meaningful when it restores but not when it merely punishes.

The Principal Secretary said her state department recognizes the partnership between Kenya and Japan in institutionalizing community probation volunteers, a borrowed system from the Japanese system, noting that the concept places communities at the heart of justice.

Beacco said the department is taking deliberate steps to institutionalize the community probation volunteers programme within government planning and budgeting frameworks to ensure its sustainability and long-term impact, calling for more support from stakeholders.