Kenya is set to establish a premier college to be known as the Kenya Correctional Service College to offer training on correctional service.

The college, to be under the State Department for Correctional Services, will be a premier institution in teaching, training, innovation, research and development in education and training on correctional matters.

According to the technical committee vice chairperson, Senior Assistant Commissioner-General of Prisons and Commandant of the Prisons Staff Training College, Angus Masoro, the college proposal is part of recommendations in the Correctional Service Bill of 2025 currently undergoing public validation.

“This does not mean we will do away with prison staff training college but we want to professionalise the correctional service since, over the years, we have been taking our staff to other universities and institutions including Kenya School of Government for training”, he said.

“We shall also be able to attract other personnel to train in our college and stamp our authority as correctional services,” the prisons boss explained.

Speaking in Kakamega town during public a validation forum, Masoro said the proposed Bill on policy and regulatory framework also seeks to merge the Prison Service, Probation and After-care Service to become the Department of Correctional Service.

Masoro said the controversial issue of conjugal visits for inmates in prison has once again come up for public discussion.

Homosexuality and sodomy have been a grouchy question in the management of Kenyan prisons, with reports of weaker inmates being bullied into unnatural sex. As a result, incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in prison is one of the highest in Kenya.

“The hot debate on this subject has not been addressed fully – neither in the regulations, in the previous law nor in the proposed policy,” he explained.

“There is also the general feeling that intersex, who are being confined within one institution but separately from male and female, should be accommodated in their own institution,” he added.

Probation Officer and a member of the Technical Committee on the Development of the Legal and Policy Framework for the Correctional Service Michael Matekwa noted that the legal and policy mandate in the field had not been reviewed for about 100 years.

“This is a window of opportunity to align the laws we are making to both the constitution of 2010, the international instruments and the good practice in the offender management,” he said.

• A Tell / KNA report / By Albert Muteshi