BY BENJAMIN OCHIENG
WHEN warders went on strike in 2007 demanding risk allowances that had been awarded to police and improve living standards, the first threat they made was to set free death row inmates.
It is norm knowledge that correctional centers are designed homes for capital offenders such as rapists, violent robbers, bank robbers, murderers and similar related crime doers caught and prosecuted against the penal code. However, civil cases some times handcuff culprits to jail facilities but that inst an alarm to the peaceful society.
With many criminal gangs in records, minds ran fast after the threat and frozen all the confidence bestrode to the noise makers who call press conferences whenever thorough search in jail is conducted and evaporated in a moment.
But never ask why, the so called watchdogs, cats or humans who frequently wrong- rights will have no atmosphere to sleep or work with people like Onyancha’s of the serial killer gang or people who kill wives and children and go underground like the Nyalenda estate incident in Kisumu of last year who have been let loose by the warders in a “threat de mission”.
For comrades who think that the search in prison is the normal like massage therapy are misled. Here inmates are stripped naked as others keep aerial view from the towers of Babel commonly referred in prisons as Kisuguu as their officer in charge instructs “ruka chura kumbafu”(frog jump you fool) as they enjoy the free movie naked men desperately. Any hesitation leads to proper beatings even in this new era of new constitution dispensation and reforms. A similar orgy image was evident to Kenyans at Kamiti Maximum Security prisons in 2008 when a warder secretly captured his colleagues in a search operation and sneaked to citizen T.V then to all media houses but of course at a price.
The Kamiti screening assignment got complete after an inmate paid with his dear life sparkling protest and debate even in parliament. The human rights bulldogs were not let behind the critics but the big question they are asked by the warders, how do they want a criminal thug to be handled? Do they think criminals understand the language of pestering? “Please inmate accept to work today”. This terminology would be new and strange to warders even if it means replacing the whole force with fresh blood of recruits.
The binocular eye of the human rights into our correctional centers has placed the facilities management and its brigade in a catch 22 situation. In the process inmates who are always matter with times took the advantage of the pressure of the Human Right Commission into jails to teach warders lessons of their life times and should even expect the worse prison breaks than the one that rocked Korinda facility in 2010 when 38 inmates ran to freedom in Busia county at night.
I would wish to remind Omar Hassan and company that these bad- boys in prison posses all the qualities of what they are, rude, arrogant, dangerous who sometimes even kill the law enforcers assigned to them and never waste any loophole to freedom.
Blood sprinkled by bullets from warders at Nakuru main prison have not even dried up when the inmates broke the perimeter fence and ran to freedom from the London based facility. The prison break temporarily turned the area to a gun shooting range. As if the lessons to the warders wasn’t enough tailed another Naivasha Annexe prison break which left 28 inmates to freedom in 2008.the inmates scaled a 24 meters wall to freedom.
Warders have not come to terms with the haunts of three colleagues killed by inmates in Naivasha facility in 1979. The inmates killed the officers on duty, gorged their brains and ate like wild beasts. Angry warders pounced on inmates killing 87 in a revenge mission after the alarm “king’ora” was triggered in a weeks long operation.
Kodiaga facility in Kisumu is also another hot spot for escape escapades. Warders frequent the chase of escapees through Korando village trying out their Kiswahili ya jela “Afande hiyo mtu iko wapi kipande hii” ask a warder as the search intensifies towards Atingli hills behind the facility.
Crimes of these inmates have technologically gone hi-tech to an extent of using mobile phones to con unsuspecting public. Criminal investigations department led links to Kamiti Maximum as inmates prove smarter with time.
It is true a daunting task to make the reforms in their facilities a “come true dream” but we accept having realized a good transportation services given with the new vehicles, improved housing units, sanitation, improved salaries and allowances and armed with sophisticated weaponry but for inmates “kaba, kaba, mbili, mbili” will never be a thing of the past in our jails or risk letting the dogs out.
ENDS
The writer is a freelance scribe based in Kisumu and can be reached on 0720 767447,or box 9117-40141 Kisumu.