Kenyan prisoners on death row weren’t deterred by the threat of the death penalty, research finds

Kenya’s final execution of a prisoner was in 1987. However the nation nonetheless hosts a dying row inhabitants of almost 600. Nearly all had been sentenced to dying for homicide or theft with violence. New sentences are handed down yearly.

Kenya is an “abolitionist de facto” state: the dying penalty remains to be current in legislation and individuals are sentenced to dying, however they don’t seem to be executed. At present, 17 of the African Union’s 54 member states are abolitionist de facto—they have not carried out an execution of a prisoner for no less than 10 years. Simply 11 are totally retentionist, which means that they sentence folks to dying and have carried out executions.

Advocates for the dying penalty will usually argue that it deters potential offenders from committing critical crime—even when a rustic has not executed anybody for years.

However our current analysis, Residing with a Demise Sentence in Kenya: Prisoners’ Experiences of Crime, Punishment and Demise Row, suggests this is not true.

We spoke to 671 inmates who had been sentenced to dying in Kenya. Simply over 1 / 4 had had their sentences commuted to life. Most mentioned that they had no concept that their crimes would possibly appeal to a dying sentence.

Our findings assist analysis executed in different international locations: that the specter of being sentenced to dying seems to have little bearing on how folks behave. In addition they assist the argument that abolishing the dying penalty would not result in a spike in violent crime in Kenya.

In line with deterrence theorists, potential offenders will probably be deterred by the dying penalty as a result of they make rational decisions about whether or not to offend. They use data concerning the related legal guidelines and punishments, after which weigh up the prices and advantages of offending. They are going to be deterred in the event that they assume it is probably they are going to be caught and convicted, and that the potential punishment outweighs the rewards.

Our examine discovered that typically, these preconditions for being deterred from committing capital crimes weren’t met.

The analysis

We studied the experiences of prisoners serving dying sentences in Kenya. The work was executed by way of the Demise Penalty Challenge, working with Oxford College’s Demise Penalty Analysis Unit. Our colleagues on the Kenya Nationwide Fee on Human Rights carried out interviews with 671 prisoners (33 had been girls) sentenced to dying for homicide (44% of the overall) and theft with violence (56%).

Many of the prisoners had been poorly educated. Individuals primarily used native languages. They may not have been capable of perceive data distributed in Kenya’s nationwide languages: English and Swahili. This may increasingly clarify why most did not know that the dying penalty was the probably punishment for his or her offense. Our examine discovered that simply 1% of our pattern mentioned they knew the dying penalty was a punishment accessible for his or her offense in legislation.

As well as, solely 4% of these convicted of theft and eight% of these convicted of homicide mentioned that they had considered the potential of being sentenced to dying. Nonetheless, 48% of murderers and 69% of robbers mentioned that they had contemplated being despatched to jail earlier than committing the crime.

The examine additionally challenged the declare that offenders make rational decisions about whether or not to offend, no less than in instances of murder. For instance, the most typical causes given by individuals for committing homicide had been anger (27%), provocation (23%), self-defense (17%) and excessive emotional conditions (13%).

Lower than a 3rd of individuals mentioned data of the legislation and potential punishments had affected their conduct in any respect. General, few prisoners who dedicated crimes that resulted in a sentence of dying had, on the time of the offense, thought-about this potential final result.

Shifts throughout Africa

In 2022, three sub-Saharan international locations abolished the dying penalty: the Central African Republic in June, Equatorial Guinea in September and Zambia in December.

In Zambia in 2016, Cornelius Mweetwa—a former lawyer and police officer who’s now minister for the nation’s Southern Province—argued that deterrence didn’t “work”.

He famous three assumptions that deterrence theorists use: that folks know the penalties for crimes; that they’ll management their actions; and that folks make choices to commit against the law based mostly on logic not ardour.

“Nonetheless, the three assumptions normally will not be true. Due to this fact … folks nonetheless commit these crimes.”

Mweetwa made one other argument that additionally got here by way of in our analysis. That the cruel, socially disadvantaged dying row regime, coupled with condemned prisoners’ “fixed consciousness of their impending execution” meant they had been being subjected to merciless and inhuman punishment as outlined by the UN Conference Towards Torture.

Whereas there could also be some variations between Zambia and Kenya, most international locations within the area can have comparable ranges of relative deprivation, each materials and academic. Due to this fact, the rationales utilized in Zambia resulting in abolition would equally apply to Kenya.

Subsequent steps

Kenya has been equivocal on its place on the dying penalty. Whereas varied makes an attempt have been made to maneuver in direction of abolition, and mass commutations have taken a whole lot of prisoners off dying row, the nation continues to condemn folks to dying.

Our report displays on the histories, decision-making and jail experiences of these topic to the dying penalty in Kenya. It supplies a chance to raised perceive the lives fractured by this method.

And our findings are clear: abolition of the dying penalty in Kenya will not result in an increase in violent crime. The nation ought to, subsequently, take the plain step ahead and abolish the dying penalty in legislation.

This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.