The Judiciary yesterday undertook to examine ways in which bail and bond terms for offenders can be reviewed to tackle congestion in detention centres.
The Director of Public Prosecutions launched the review of pending files at the Nairobi Remand Prisons in the Industrial Area.
The drive will run up to Thursday and will ascertain causes for delay of cases and identify those that can be expedited.
Inmates at the facility complained of long adjournments of cases and the states’ inaction to provide witnesses in court during trial.
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High Court judge Jessie Lessit, who represented the Judiciary, admitted to being at fault when it came to adjournment of cases. She said it is an issue that will be dealt with and they will also look into issuing bond terms based on one’s capability to pay rather than the offence he-she is charged with.
restore justice system
“We need to restore the criminal justice system. And to reduce pre-trial detention, I assure you we will look into reviewing bond terms to offenders so as to not have our facilities overcrowded,” she said.
Available records show that as at January 17 in 12 magistrates’ courts in Nairobi alone there are 2,532 pending cases and suspects are in remand.
The Chief Magistrate’s Court in Makadara leads with 1,164 pending cases and the Milimani law courts follows with 417 cases.
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basis of decisions
Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Dorcas Oduor said information obtained from the pilot exercise will assist in making a decision on the manner in which cases will
be dealt with or disposed of.
At Nairobi Area, the team of prosecutors will be reviewing 3,100 cases.
“We will want to know the ages and stations of the remandees, for how long they may have been there and the offences they are being held for,” Oduor said.
She said in cases where bail or bond was ordered by court, they would seek to find out why the remandee has not taken that course.
They will also seek to explore the reasons why the population of remandees could not be scaled down. The initiative by the office of the DPP is to focus on the issue of overcrowding in prisons.
“Our prosecutors will attend to the remandees and establish where the gaps are.
“We will review and re-evaluate the progress at the end of 100 days and hopefully we shall have learnt lessons to inform our next steps,” Oduor said.