The Office of Director of Public Prosecution is set to launch a national review of all pending cases amid efforts to clear existing
backlog.
Secretary Public Prosecutions Dorcas Oduor said the ODPP shall review all pending files within 100 days beginning January 22.
Oduor said the main aim of the review is to ascertain the main cause of case delays, identify cases that can be expedited, propose feasible and practical strategies for the ODPP prisons decongestion.
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She said the office also aims to influence policy and legal reforms in the criminal justice sector and identify possible areas of intervention by stakeholders.
This comes barely days after Chief Justice David Maraga raised concerns over the rising numbers of people being remanded in prisons for petty crimes.
Maraga on Monday said the number is alarming compared to those whose cases are successfully prosecuted.
He spoke during the launch of the Criminal Justice Committee at Supreme Court.
He said there is a great need to urgently correct some of the embarrassing features within the justice system.
Maraga said for a long time, all the actors in the justice chain including judiciary, police, prosecution, probation and Children's department have had structural and systematic challenges that require urgent attention to streamline the sector.
The Kenya Prison Service has 108 prison institutions out of which only 18 are for women prisons, 87 for male offenders.
While 3 others are for juvenile male offenders, two are for Borstal institution and one Youth Corrective Training Centre known as the YCTC.
Latest statistics released in 2010 indicated that the current inmate population is about 55,800 against an established capacity for 18,600.
ODPP said the 2016 statistics reveals that inmate population on the facilities has however reduced to 53, 841 out of which 46 percent are remandees.
"This is a clear indication that our prison facilities are over crowded with remandees making the biggest population of persons in custody," Oduor said.
CJ Maraga had also said 75 per cent of those sent to prison are aged between 18 -35 years. The majority are poor whose only offence is lack of business license or being found drunk and disorderly.
He said it is worth noting there is a high low rate of prosecution of serious offences.
"Only five percent of sexual offences have been determined with offences like organised crimes and capital offences recording the highest acquittals and withdrawals. This only means that freedom is being procured at the expense of justice," Maraga said.
Maraga said more children are also being remanded in adult prisons instead of children remand homes with their cases taking abnormal long periods before they are resolved.
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