Plans to establish Ksh9 million ($69,363) special mother-and-child unit at the Embu Women’s Prison is underway. The new facility is expected to improve the living conditions and welfare of children living with their incarcerated mothers.

Similar units are expected to be rolled out in other correctional facilities.

Principal Secretary for Correctional Services Salome Beacco welcomed the project initiated by an NGO, FreedomWithin Kenya, and underlined that the state is keen on upgrading day-care and child-friendly facilities in all 46 women’s prisons to shift the criminal justice system from being punitive to being a rehabilitative.

According to the principal secretary the state department for correctional services is leveraging partnerships to advance the envisaged reforms. Dr Beacco added that the Government is also committed to ensuring that every person under its care is treated humanely, with compassion and respect, in accordance with the Kenyan Constitution and international human rights standards.

In Kenya, children are allowed to stay with their mothers in correctional facilities until the age of four. At any one time, there are estimated to be hundreds of children staying in Kenyan correctional institutions. However, only a few facilities have separate day-care centres for children, and in almost all cases children mix with the general population of the prisons at some point during the day.

According to 2023 Kenya Prison Nursery Country Report by Jane Clarke and Socorro Topete, in 2022, there were 58,887 people imprisoned in Kenya – 2,683 of these were female prisoners. There are a total of 43 female correctional facilities in Kenya, the largest of which is Lang’ata Women’s Maximum Security Prison, located just outside of Nairobi.

“A study from 018 found that 81 per cent of female detainees in Kenyan prisons had at least one child, while all female detainees in the sample group had some kind of dependent. The general conditions in Kenya’s women’s prisons vary between institutions,” the report says.

It adds that independent reports have found that women are subject to unnecessary searches, perform unpaid domestic work and do not have free access to sanitary products for personal care. However, it is also reported that pregnant women can access appropriate care during childbirth, give birth in hospitals, and are free of constraint during labour, consistent with international guidelines.

The effectiveness of correctional services, the principal secretary noted, depends on the professionalism and discipline of all officers, who are entrusted with the care and rehabilitation of incarcerated persons.

“We appreciate FreedomWithin Kenya and its partners for supporting the establishment of the Embu Mother and Child Care Unit. Your support is restoring hope, health, safety, hygiene and dignity to children while providing their mothers with a more conducive environment to undertake rehabilitation and vocational training,” the PS expressed.

Speaking during the ground-breaking ceremony, Dr Mary Waceke Thongoh-Muia, Partnership Lead at FreedomWithin Kenya, called for greater collaboration among government, corporates, foundations, professional organisations, communities and individual well-wishers to address the plight of innocent children living in prisons with their incarcerated mothers.

“A prison environment was never designed with an infant or young child in mind. Our responsibility is, therefore, to ensure that where children must live alongside their mothers, their basic needs for safety, hygiene, nutrition, play, learning and nurturing are not overlooked,” Dr Thongoh-Muia explained.

The event also witnessed the commissioning of a newly built Ksh4 million WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) facility, designed to provide a safer, healthier and more child-friendly environment for mothers and young children.

The facility comprises child-friendly toilets and showers, handwashing facilities, a laundry area, baby-changing amenities, disability-inclusive toilets, a water tower, two 5,000-litre water tanks and a water reticulation system.

The facility was built with seed funding from the Napier Fellowship USA, awarded to Ms. Shakinar Mutulili, a co-founder of FreedomWithin Kenya.

However, the project cost excludes architectural and project management support provided pro-bono by Triad Architects, as well as administrative and coordination support provided by FreedomWithin Kenya.

Nonetheless, the soon-to-be built mother and child unit has benefited from contributions from family, friends and the Triad Foundation. Triad Architects also offered pro-bono architectural and technical support with the Kenya Prisons Service providing institutional leadership, access to the project site, and technical guidance, ensuring the project is executed within the prison environment.

The Embu project is the latest milestone in the organisation’s journey that began in 2018, when Shakinar and her sister Ms Naikena, then teenagers, began mobilising their peers through food and diaper drives to support children living alongside incarcerated mothers.

• A Tell Media / KNA report / By Michael Omondi