The Power of Mercy Advisory Committee (POMAC) has supported calls to abolish life sentence from the country’s penal code system.
The committee joined the prison department and inmates in calling for the amendment of the law so that life sentence could turn into a definite jail term.
This emerged when the committee visited Naivasha GK prison, which is the largest penal institution in the country with over 2,800 inmates.
According to the committee’s vice-chairperson Regina Boisabi, there was need to address the issue of life sentence as one way of rehabilitating inmates.
She admitted that over 75 percent of inmates in the country’s penal institutions were innocent adding that the committee was committed to assisting those who had reformed go home.
Addressing the inmates, Boisabi said that they had received over 42,000 petitions from inmates seeking to be pardoned under the presidential amnesty.
“Of the petitions we have already gone through 35,000 and there is need to amend the life sentence act and have a defiant jail term issued to inmates,” she said.
Deputy Commissioner of prison Nicholas Emase said that they were working on amending some archaic prison laws, which were put in place by colonial governments.
He supported calls to have life sentence abolished adding that there should be a time frame just like was the practice in many countries.
“We are working with other government agencies to amend some archaic laws which were put in place by colonialists just to oppress inmates,” he said.
The deputy officer in charge of the prison Mathew Mutisya welcomed the committee adding that the prison had 2,856 inmates of which 1,250 were serving life sentence and 590 are on death penalty.
“Many of the inmates have reformed and its time that they were given a second chance and this committee comes in handy,” he said.
On their part, the inmates supported calls to abolish life sentence and questioned the criteria used to release inmates through the presidential amnesty.