Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Recidivism on Kenya Prisons: A Case Study of Ruiru Prison, Kiambu County

Abstract

Recidivism is an important indicator that explains how criminal justice fairs in its role of rehabilitation of offenders. As an important criminal concept, and due to the surging overcrowding in prisons with the associated economic cost, it has drawn the attention of both scholars and policy-makers in Kenya. However, the range of rehabilitation programmes designed to that effect failed to achieve the set objectives. With 75% recidivism rate, the country has a reason to review why reoffending is so high. As a consequence, this study mainly sought to examine the socio-economic factors that influenced recidivism in Kenya prisons while using Ruiru prison as a case study. The specific objectives of the study were: to identify the main social economic factors that influenced recidivism among prisoners in Ruiru prison, establish key strategies adopted by the Ruiru prison administration to manage social economic factors which influenced recidivism among prisoners in Ruiru prison, and to examine challenges that hindered management of social economic factors which influenced recidivism among prisoners in Ruiru prison. This study was guided by the general strain theory and used descriptive research design. The target population were 300 inmates who were recidivists, 55 administrative staff and 20 nyumba kumi community elders in villages from which the inmates are drawn totaling 375. The sample size was 259. The sampling process involved two stages for both the inmates and staff. Firstly, it was probability sampling. In the second stage, through stratified sampling, inmates and staff were grouped into two strata. From each stratum, respondents were selected through simple probability sampling. For the nyumba kumi community elders, they were identified via quota sampling. Questionnaires, interview schedule and focused group discussions were used to collect data from the three categories of respondents respectively. The prison routine procedures such as security regular screening of visitors, regular headcount of inmates among others inconvenienced the research process by spending more time in collection of data but it had no significant limitation that affected the results. As such, a more than 70% access rate was achieved as envisaged by the researcher to give a relevant report. The data was then subjected to descriptive analysis by the help of Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) and results presented as texts, tables, charts and graphs. Besides, ethical principles were adhered to and clearances sought from the relevant bodies such as relevant school’s’ faculty, NACOSTI and local government authorities. The study found out a direct relationship between social-economic factors of education, social ties, unemployment, and poverty and increased recidivism among inmates in Ruiru prison. The study also recommends enhanced vocational trainings and life skills for the inmates, more tailor- made training for the officers, and a proposal towards a more positive relationship between inmates (during and after release) and communities