Word: prisoners
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...security law that is often used against political opponents. Over 500 people were arrested - the biggest mass arrest since the city's race riots in 1969 - and over 50 people have been charged with taking part in an illegal assembly, a crime punishable with two-years in prison if found guilty. Among those arrested were about 40 minors under the age of 18 years who were held overnight in police lock ups, whose parents National Police Chief Mr Musa Hassan has also vowed to charge under the Child Act for allowing them to take part in the protest. "We strongly...
...Experts and rights activists have welcomed the new decree, but are greeting Kibaki's justification with some skepticism. Just as likely a culprit for the inmates' "undue mental anguish" is the fact that conditions in Kenya's prisons are, by most accounts, absolutely horrifying. Rights groups have repeatedly documented cases of death, torture, malnutrition and severe overcrowding within Kenya's prison system. (Read: "In Kenya, Charges of High-Level Conspiracies...
...Experts say the more persuasive reason for the decision is, as Kibaki noted in his statement Monday, that Kenyan law confines those sentenced to death to their cells, barring them from taking part in prison work or study programs. A presidential press service statement said those rules had led to "idleness and subsequent negative impact on prison discipline as recently witnessed in some facilities...
...statement seemed to be referring to a recent parliamentary committee report that blamed death row inmates for bouts of violence earlier this year, including fatal attacks on prison wardens at two of the country's biggest prisons. "We haven't had the hangman for 22 years and these criminals have been very dangerous to society because they are idle," Casper Awuondo, a sociology professor at the University of Nairobi, tells TIME. "They have been using their mobile phones to threaten people, extort money, do all sorts of things, because they are idle." (See pictures of prison life in Baghdad...
...have resorted to extrajudicial killings as way to manage rising crime," says Muthoni Wanyeki, executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. "We might not have legal executions taking place, but we certainly have illegal executions taking place." If Kenya truly wants to end the mental anguish of its prison inmates, it will need to tackle issues bigger than idleness...