A fresh start for former convicts

Cynics sneer at former Vice-President Moody Awori’s prison reforms, arguing that jails were never meant to be hotels.

Uncle Moody, as he was fondly called, gained fame — you might call it notoriety — for his relentless agitation for inmates’ conjugal rights over and above replacing their archaic khaki uniforms with striped ones and giving them television sets — a far cry from the harsh life that hitherto defined incarceration.

It was also under the benign VP’s watch that the sleek ‘Moody Hoppa’ buses replaced the grim caged trucks that were once prisoners’ standard transport between jails and courts.

Notwithstanding public scepticism over the perceived pampering of inmates, partners in the rehabilitation of serving and ex-inmates are unanimous that mistreating inmates only embitters and hardens them. They actually feel that ill-treating inmates could be a factor in the high rate of recidivism whereby freed prisoners return to jail over repeat offences.

The director of Prisons programmes in charge of rehabilitation, Mrs Mary Khaemba, told the Saturday Nation that it was unrealistic to expect to reform inmates living under such dehumanised conditions and whose sole preoccupation was their sufferings.

And it can be as dehumanising as experienced firsthand by Mr Kelvin Mwikya, the founder of Philemon Foundation that runs Kenya’s only halfway house (place for accommodating and integrating ex-prisoners into society).

Moreover, the traditional crime and punishment approach not only negates the reform spirit of recent years, but it also ignores the real reasons that land people in jail.

Experts blame imprisonment and recidivism on two key factors: abject poverty that creates the so-called survival offenders; they engage in petty crime to meet their daily needs, and social stigma, which renders ex-inmates pariahs in their communities.

The stigma former prisoners face is such that even members of their families treat them with distrust and shun them. Dogged by suspicion, they find it difficult to reintegrate in society after serving their jail sentences. Prison becomes a more welcome abode, hence that cliché headline Jailbird flies back home, so beloved of editors.

Mr Mwikya suffered the stigma of bearing the ex-inmate tag firsthand — forcing him to literally seek readmission to prison. On being freed from jail after a successful appeal against conviction over trumped up robbery with violence charges, the only relative he could count on in Nairobi turned him away at the ungodly hour of 10 o’clock in the night.

His cousin’s chilling words — “my place has no place for you to sleep” — still ring in his ears years after he carved himself a niche in ex-prisoners’ rehabilitation. Stigma, suspicion, rejection and lack of equal opportunities are ex-convicts’ lot. After his cousin showed him the door, Mr Mwikya’s heart sank when he walked straight into police on patrol. As they bombarded him with questions, both relevant and irrelevant, like “Who are you?” “Where are you from?”

“Who is your mother?” Who is your father?” “When did you die?” “When did you resurrect?” Mr Mwikya, who had been released less than 24 hours ago, saw jail staring at his face, yet again. Flashing back to Athi River Prison, where he had served three out of a 13-year sentence, his questions to freed inmates, who had come back to jail soon after release came back to haunt him — and especially their standard response: “Huko nje hakukaliki (out there is unliveable).”

As the police did their rounds with him on board, he was praying: “God, I was released today, only to go back to jail?” Still, he resolved: “I’ll tell them I’m from jail, and if they want to kill me, so be it.” No sooner did he say he was from jail, than the police reacted: “Huyu ni mmoja wao (This is one of them).”

The criminal tag was not about to fall off any time soon. For the first time, it was clear to him why so many freed inmates returned to jail so often, so soon. It was all about prejudice and stigma; once a criminal, always a criminal. Luckily for Mr Mwikya, the body search only yielded a Bible, correspondence course certificates, the Prisons release letter and the skills certificate for the Grade I carpentry course earned while he served his sentence.

The Bible convinced one of the officers to take him to the Robert Musomba Church in Dandora, and being a Friday night, it was open for ‘Kesha’. “Make sure this guy prays,” was the police parting shot as they dumped him at the church. With nowhere to go, he spent a fortnight at the church in near-starvation conditions, too petrified to disclose that he had just been released from jail.

But how could he, given that he had just been rejected by his cousin and had just had a close shave with the police? Although he had been born again in prison, the trauma of rejection was overwhelming. And it did not matter that he was in church. “Words of prayer could not come from my mouth. I could not share my predicament with anybody because I feared rejection.

After two weeks and on the verge of starvation, I decided to go back to prison. I walked from Dandora to the Prisons headquarters and I met the commissioner at the entrance.” Without hesitation, a starving Mr Mwikya told the Prisons boss: “Afande, niko na shida. (Sir, I have a problem)… I was released and I have nowhere to go.”

He was taken to Prisons chaplain Elizabeth Mwangangi, who, on Mr Mwikya’s plea, offered tea with bread before he had the strength to explain his case. He wanted back to jail… Aha, Aha! And in the evening, Mrs Mwangangi took him to the Industrial Area Remand Home, where he was told: “We don’t put in people without a warrant of arrest.”