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{
    "id": 590044,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/590044/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 338,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "The only decent thing about the officers is the uniform and the shoes. They have no houses. The houses are similar to the ones that the criminals sleep in. The only distinction is the way they dress. They wear different clothes. As the Senator listed here, we have international instruments; one of them is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. There are almost seven of them. Kenya has had the privilege of having these documents but we have not attempted to reform the correctional services and centres to the extent that we can feel properly at peace so that if an offender is taken through these centres, they will come out changed. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, we are still using the same old technique that was found in the Bible where Apostle Paul was taken to a very remote island called Patmos. The people who came to Kenya in 1911 think that we created our island to deposit these people like Syberia, where Mandela went for 27years. Prisons like Kamiti Maximum Security Prison and the Lang’ata Women’s Prison are some of those that we have here. We have not changed the model. If those people who started them rose from the grave today, they would be surprised that the centres are the exact ones that we had at that time. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have keen interest to know because in 1952 when the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was arrested and tried in Kapenguria, he was taken to a prison where some criminals wanted to kill him one night. Just before that time, a young man called Saiwa Chemonges from Pokot quickly ran and told the old man: “Change the position of your bed because we have heard the wazungus are planning to kill you.” Indeed, they tried to kill him. Sure enough in the late 1960s, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta appointed Saiwa the first African Commissioner in charge of prisons."
}