More than 1,000 children are in detention centres across the country for various reasons including engaging in crime, a report by a Judiciary panel says.
The report by the National Council of Administration of Justice says some 1,019 children are distributed in various centres, the majority of them in child remand institutions for being in conflict with the law.
The centres include children rescue centres, children remand homes, reception, assessment and classification centres and lastly rehabilitation schools for juveniles.
Data sampled by the council from such institutions shows that the number of admitted children tends to increase but the rates of the children leaving the institutions is equally higher.
The data as of June last year, shows in five children's rescue centres, while the number of children admitted are 757 those who exited are 555.
The number of children remaining in the five facilities as of June 2023 was 202. In nine children remand homes sampled, 3,620 were admitted but 2,952 exited and 688 children remained.
Further, in two reception, assessment and classification centres featured in the report, 234 children were admitted, 212 exited and 22 remained. In nine rehabilitation schools, 298 children were admitted, 171 exited and 127 remained.
The government handles children's affairs through the Directorate of Children Services.
It deals with rescuing children who may be lost, abandoned or neglected through its statutory children’s institutions.
Further, the directorate is in charge of running the children’s remand homes to hold children in conflict with the law for their care and protection.
Children in borstal institutions in the country are young people who have committed serious offences but are too young to be in a regular prison.
The main purpose of a borstal institution is to rehabilitate children through training and counselling programmes.
Such children who are below the age of 18 but who have run afoul of the law, are taken to borstal institution.
As of 2016, there were only three such institutions in the country.
The government in 2016, through the Ministry of Education, had ordered that students who engage in criminal conduct including fighting teachers or burning schools be expelled and not readmitted.
But the National Parents Association asked for better sanctions, including rehabilitation detention centres, arguing that discontinuing the education of rowdy children would be tantamount to ruining their lives.
Instead, the association says borstals and approved schools should be expanded and improved to rehabilitate difficult children.
The report says that “while these children serve their term in rehabilitation schools, they are engaged in vocational skills training such as carpentry, building and masonry, bakery and confectionery, hairdressing, and electrical wiring.”
The NCAJ report follows a revelation in 2012 that hundreds of children below the age of four live in prison with their mothers, enduring unhygienic condition and congestion among other ills.
The report said of 361 children in various correctional facilities, 80 live with their mothers at Langáta Women’s Prison.
The children got their way into
the facilities when their mothers
got convicted and they would not
be separated.
