ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has fundamentally impacted the operations and conditions in Kenya’s penal institutions. Kenyan prisons, and the criminal justice system in general, are modelled on the colonial justice system and grounded in a retributive philosophy. The long-term impact of this has been the perennial challenge of overcrowding, stretched resources to support prison services and the general stagnation of penal reforms. The COVID-19 pandemic has led the prison service and the justice sector generally to review and adapt policies and administrative arrangements in a bid to curb and control the spread of COVID-19 in Kenyan prisons. This chapter reviews the responses and adaptation of Kenya’s penal institutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how this has affected the broader laws and policies regarding prisons and changing prison conditions and policies and their longer-term impacts.
