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Prisoners in Kenya will earn a living and pay taxes while in jail according to new reforms proposed by the government.

To jumpstart the initiative the government has teamed up with development partners among them the Chandaria foundation to construct bakeries and modernise workshops.

 Correctional Services Principal Secretary Dr Salome Beacco, disclosed that the government has already unveiled eight key priority areas to ensure that the inmates become productive when they are finally integrated back into society.

 The priority areas include, reforms such as automation of revenue collection, legal and policy framework support, revitalisation of prison farms, modernisation of prisons industry and social protection.

 Others are, education and vocational training coordination, institutional infrastructure and operational capacity, housing, and environment and climate change mitigation.  “We want our offenders to work, pay taxes and benefit their families while serving their respective sentences,” Beacco told MPs when she appeared before a committee last week.

 The government is currently constructing bakeries in Kisumu, Mombasa, Meru, Nyeri and Eldoret prisons.

 The reforms aim to embrace a right based approach in rehabilitation programmes.

 This has seen the government get involved in supporting training for prison officers, improved medical care and dietary changes, clothing and beddings, improved transportation and remote parenting.

 “When the population increases, the number of offenders also increases. All of us can be guests of the state,” the PS says.

 Kenya’s Prisons Service is synonymous with the production of quality furniture products serving as a revolving fund.

 It has also been engaged in multibillion shilling works for instance the 2012 renovation of the National Assembly and Senate debating chambers that involved making and installation of members’ seats with each going for about Sh400,000.

 The Prisons Service is currently revamping the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters. Currently, Kamiti maximum prison has the largest furniture industry in the country.

Juvenille prisons

 Asked if this will make life quite comfortable for prisoners and possibly deter them from leaving prison upon serving their sentences, Dr Beacco said; “once they serve their respective sentences, they are released and part of their time in prison is rehabilitation for seamless integration back into the society.”

 The country has 135 prisons spread across the country that includes six women and three juvenile prisons with over 63,000 inmates, which poses a huge strain on the government in terms of feeding them using the limited exchequer releases.

 The country also has 142 probation units.  In reforming the prison service, the government seeks to decongest the prison facilities by embracing community corrections and alternative dispute resolution avenues and improve the welfare of offenders.

 This is to be done by providing the offenders with adequate beds, mattresses, blankets and personal effects.

 The staff have not been left behind as their welfare will be improved through the provision of adequate stores and houses.

 The prisoners will be involved in the construction of 28,000 housing units through the government’s affordable housing programme.

They will also be involved in the planting of 100 million trees annually in the correctional facilities countrywide as the government moves to improve the country’s cover to the United Nations (UN) requirement of at least 12 per cent forest cover.

 Under the administrative, legal and policy framework support, the government intends to acquire title deeds to all “our lands” and a review of the sector laws- Prisons Act, Borstal Institutions Act, the Probation of Offenders Act and Community Service Orders Act and collapsing them into one legal instrument.