Public Policy and practice in juvenile rehabilitation programmes in Kenya: current trends and needed reforms

Abstract

Historically juvenile rehabilitation schools and services in Kenya have oscillated between government ministries of education; home affairs; gender, children and social development; and currently the ministry of labour, social security, and services. This cyclic oscillation implies hesitancy in policy statement on the function of the rehabilitation schools. Furthermore, the practice in juvenile rehabilitation has undergone paradigm shifts from the punitive disciplinarian, to carminative, egalitarian, and systematic paradigms between 1909 and 1995. This is in spite of the numerous international policies on juvenile rehabilitation, prevention of offence and treatment of incarcerated offenders, to which Kenya is a signatory, and is expected to have ratified. Empirical and theoretical support shows that with appropriate policy provisions, an offender is effective rehabilitated. In view of the cyclic oscillation of juvenile rehabilitation, the Kenyan policy guidelines visa-a-vise international policies, and the current practices in juvenile rehabilitation were examined in this paper, with a purpose of answering the following questions; what are the policy provisions on juvenile rehabilitation in Kenya? Do juvenile rehabilitation policies in Kenya conform to international standards? How effective is the current juvenile rehabilitation in Kenya? This paper created a basis for formulation of rehabilitation principles that lead to effective rehabilitation. This was achieved through an examination of policy and practice in Kenyan public juvenile rehabilitation schools using mixed research methodology that borrowed aspects of both phenomenology and descriptive survey research designs. The findings indicate inadequate policies, discrepancies between policy and practice and generally, an ineffective rehabilitation programmes.