Inmates serving life sentences at Naivasha GK prison will petition Parliament seeking to have the penalty scrapped. Their move came as they were treated to a rare ‘Chapati Forum’ organised by Naivasha Rotarians in an exercise marked with song and dance.
The 3,000 inmates and warders shared the rare delicacy as they made their appeal to the Head of State to spearhead the process of repealing life sentences to allow those who had reformed rejoin society.
While thanking the President for doing away with the death sentence, they said the baggage had been transferred from their heads to their back irrespective of positive transformation in their behaviour. The officer in charge of the prison Patrick Mwenda supported the inmates saying some of them had spent more than 20 years in jail and had reformed.
He called on the Power of Mercy Committee to hasten the process of releasing inmates who had successfully undergone correction as one way of motivating the others. “We have hundreds of inmates who have stayed in prison for more than 20 years and they should be considered by the mercy committee,” he said.
Mwenda thanked the Rotarians, saying the support and donation was an encouragement to the prisoners, some of whom had given up on life. Rotarian coordinator Thomas Gichure said this was part of their plans to support the less fortunate in the society.
“We are preparing 7,000 chapatis for our brothers as a way of encouraging them and offering them an early Christmas gift,” he said. While thanking the donors, one of the inmates Cliff Bikeri echoed calls to scrap the death and life sentences. Bikeri, who is serving a life sentence for robbery with violence, said the current prison system had reformed them and called for a second chance.
The post Naivasha prisoners plead for repeal of life sentence appeared first on Mediamax Network Limited.