Imprisonment is not the best option to rehabilitate convicts.
This is according to Evelyne Butichi, a lawyer, who spends a lot of her time in Kibera, advocating for locals to keep away from crime.
She says imprisonment should be left for serious crimes but petty offenders should do community work to improve the environment.
When the Star caught up with Butichi, she was addressing a group of youths on the importance of keeping the area around the court room clean and the importance of being a law abiding citizen.
“Let us make sure that the place is clean and this will benefit all of us and the generations to come. We need to be law abiding citizens to avoid finding ourselves on the dark side of the law,” she said.
According to her, courts have to be innovative and move from the rigid traditional way of punishing petty offenders by paying fines which they cannot raise or locking them up, to having them clean court premises and government facilities.
She advocates for plea bargaining and other mitigated options at the discretion of magistrates to help in rehabilitating suspects and giving them a second chance.
“In the wake of Covid-19, courts need to innovate alternative ways of dealing with petty offenders such as diversion and plea bargaining so as to give offenders second chance before subjecting them to full trial,” Butichi said.
She however cautions that these interventions must still meet the threshold of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Through observation, most of these petty offenders have no knowledge on how to take plea and so many do it out of duress not considering the consequences.
The police cells, remands and jail facilities are getting congested once again due to such people who cannot afford paying bond, cash bail and fines yet they are first offenders with petty offences who should be led to do manual duties around some of these facilities as a punishment then be set free with a stern warning.
"Courts situated in close proximity to slum areas should be quick in embracing Section 24(b) of the Penal Code of Kenya and the Community Service Order as alternatives to custodial sentence,” she stated.
Butichi called for community service where suspects with petty offences can be used for the benefit of the public.
She said that some suspects would have been used to clean the entrance of courts, public offices and places to make it better.
“For instance take a look at the Chief Magistrates Court-Kibera, right at the courts entrance, the drainage system is blocked by garbage and litter."
This is a good ground of extending the community service by petty offenders who are not able to pay a Sh5,000 fine.
Butichi is now calling upon organisations that are willing to partner with her undertaking both judicial and community sensitisation in the treatment of petty offenders.