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{
    "id": 834128,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/834128/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 198,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Bumula, Independent",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Mwambu Mabongah",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13309,
        "legal_name": "Moses Wekesa Mwambu Mabonga",
        "slug": "moses-wekesa-mwambu-mabonga-2"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. At the outset, I want to congratulate my brother, Hon. Washiali, for bringing this great Motion before the House. Life is sacred. As we speak here, we need to have some time to see what happens behind bars; in our prisons. That is before we can even comment. I have heard some comments that we can as well have our young people being punished from the prisons. One thing you ought to know is that a punishment to a young offender achieves very little. On the young people that we are talking about, according to the statistics we have just been given a number of 235. We need to ask ourselves some questions, just like what Mheshimiwa has just said. That even before those young people are arraigned in court, I do not know whether the authorities have ever taken time to do an assessment to know why they are behaving in such a manner. On punishing young offenders, let us consider the fact that those are people who are going through different situations, like what my brother has just highlighted. The environment in which young people are being brought up right now is not the same environment in which we were brought up. Some of us had time to sit with our parents; we had time to sit with our grandparents. I doubt whether some young people right now communicate with their grandparents. The direction we were given when we were young is not the directions that our young people are being given. They are on television every day. They copy quite a lot of things. I have even listened to one Member quoting from the Bible and justifying punishment. That is misinterpretation. The hermeneutics of the Bible is very different from that of story books. We need to understand the emotions of young people. We need to understand their capability to hold in the environment they have been put in. You realise what the Government is doing through the Big Four Agenda and the Motions that we have just discussed about youth unemployment. If I may connect it with what we are discussing now, we need to look for a solution. If you go to the counties, you will find many young people loitering in the streets. If we are talking of approved or rehabilitation schools being enhanced, we should be talking of each county having at least one rehabilitation school so that the young children that are loitering on the streets of our counties can have somewhere to go to. A rehabilitation school is just like a health facility. Those people need to be restored. What is your intention when you take a young person to prison? Is your intention to punish or to reform? Is your intention to restore or destroy? Is your intention to salvage the dream of young people or to destroy their dreams? I have even heard one Member saying that we need to look into the issue of having them in prison for even a day, two days or even a month. One thing you ought to know is that when those children are in school or college – let us talk of children who are in high school and are below 18 years old - they are in an environment where a teacher is always with a book and, probably, with a chalk. Now, what happens immediately you transfer that child from there to a prison where the caretaker is holding a gun? Do you know what comes The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}