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{
    "id": 101775,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/101775/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 263,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Wetangula",
    "speaker_title": "The Minister for Foreign Affairs",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 210,
        "legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
        "slug": "moses-wetangula"
    },
    "content": "The Minister has also talked about the sentences and the offence created in Article 4. I want him to see the danger in this. In Article 4(i) and (ii), he is prescribing the sentence by giving the maximum. If he is running away from too weak penalties for offences of this nature, then prescribing the maximum is still leaving the latitude for the courts to go to the minimum. For example, if you say that a person who engages in any organized criminal activities specified in Section 3 commits an offence and shall upon conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding Kshs1 million - a fine not exceeding Kshs1 million can be Kshs1. Courts can do that legitimately. Further, it says; “or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years.” A term not exceeding 14 years can be one day in jail! Then we will not be achieving what we are looking for. The Act should prescribe for the minimum. That you will not be fined anything less than, then you go above. In many jurisdictions, if you go to Italy, when they battled the Cosa Nostra, the sentence they give even to the gun runner, leave alone those who handle guns, is a life sentence. And if you want to deal with organized crime effectively, 14 years with parole ends up with just about nine years. Many of these young people will come out even more hardened. We must make organized crime very painful for those who engage in them and we must prescribe sentences that are truly deterrent. That is the only way we can fight organized crime. We should prescribe for sentences that will reflect the seriousness with which we take this organized criminal activities. I know that the Minister and the Government and all of us are informed by the events of the day to the extent that the Bill is almost 90 per cent focusing on crimes of violence. We should look at most sophisticated crimes than just violence. We have organized crimes in human and children trafficking, prostitution and economic crimes. If you go to Naples in Italy where the Cosa Nostra rules, they run huge conglomerates like fishing. How do they do it? They make sure that nobody fishes in the waters. Even in Government, they run construction and legitimately win tenders. How they arm twist everybody to win those tenders is what we"
}