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Prisons chaplains: symbols of hopeBy Clement NjorogeWhat are your reactions going to be when you hear anecdotes such as that of Biruri wa Wanjiru, now in his late thirties, beaten by a prison officer with a superintendent present and participating in the beating? Or of a prison officer who makes arrangements with an imprisoned drug supplier to have young male prisoners sent to 'sell' their bodies for drugs.Perhaps you will feel sick in your stomach like the father who listened to his son tell of being gang raped on his first night in prison. Or find tears filling your eyes like Mary Wangui, 70, when she tells about the day her grandson, with an obviously broken leg, was forced to walk from his cell to the prison van because officers had refused the use of a stretcher. You feel appalled to hear stories such as a prisoner being taken to solitary confinement, presumably because he had displayed “unusual” behaviour, but then being stripped naked, beaten by prison officers and chained, his food thrown on the floor and he is made to eat it like a dog, then it turns out that he is suffering from a chronic mental disorder. "My feelings then get mixed up with a hopeless anger and I become aware of the implications of that anger rippling back out into society from injustice within a prison system," says Dr Owiti, a leading psychiatrist working at Mathare Mental Mospital, Kenya's biggest mental hospital. One prisoner actually warned that if he was brutalised while in prison, when he comes out, he would get back at someone: "This anger will all come out in the wrong place." Dr Owiti warns. Even as the conditions in Kenyan prisons deteriorate, a group of religious people work full time as prison chaplains. They care for the spiritual welfare of both prisoners and staff. Rev. Fr. Peter Ndungu, 37, has been in this ministry for the past two years. He agrees that prisons in Kenya, like others in many African countires, “are places of disease, poverty and desperation, of violence and corruption. The effect of prisons is deeply negative - drugs and disease spread rapidly, mental health deteriorates, and AIDS spreads, but then all hope is not gone”. Fr. Ndungu , who has visited about 75 per cent of prisons in Kenya, is unhappy with the way the media and civil rights institutions portray Kenyan prisons. “There could be one or two which are in bad conditions and there could one or two officers who are not understanding and kind to prisoners. And because of the judicial system we have overcrowding in our prisons, but generally they are in good order and are habitable although you cannot give them a good bill of health. Prisons are not like homes and I think that is why they are called prisons whereby one is isolated from the community because of the crimes committed against the community. This is for the purpose of rehabilitation but contrary to what I read in the papers I would say that the conditions are above average.” Prison ministry in Kenya dates back to the emergency period in 1952 when religious organizations in Kenya released many of their workers to serve in prisons and detention camps on a full time basis. After independence in 1963, the Prisons Act Cap 90 of the Laws of Kenya was passed, empowering the Minister of Home Affairs, Heritage and Sports to take care of prisoner's spiritual welfare. 1977 saw the appointment of two Christian chaplains and three Muslim maalims by the Prisons department. Currently there are three full time Catholic priests, seven Protestant ministers and four Muslim maalims. The team is based at the Kenya Prisons Headquarters in Nairobi and is supported by other chaplains and Maalims in various prisons and provinces countrywide who do much work on the ground. The Catholic chaplains are seconded to the prison ministry by the Episcopal Conference and Protestants by the National Council of Churhces of Kenya, NCCK. The chief Kadhi seconds the Maalims. The chaplains consult each other to make sure there are enough catechists, maalims and Protestant ministers in every prison. The Catholic chaplains for instance are supported by 25 Christian catechists. This number is inadequate considering that Kenya has 87 prisons. The prison population is also very high. According to the Prison Audit Report, commissioned by the Kenya Human Rights Commission and released in July, 2001, facilities “meant for 18,953 inmates, were by September 30, 2000, holding up to 41,211 of which 1,756 were women.”
The real victimsCertain groups are over-represented in prison statistics. The Prison Audit Report reveals that about 95 per cent of people in Kenyan prisons are men, mostly young men from the most disadvantaged sections of society where marginalisation and exclusion is rife. Close to 2,000 women in prison come from a background of abuse and violence. Their crimes are provoked by poverty and include hawking on the streets of the capital, Nairobi. Fr. Ndungu is bitter that Kenyan prisons are filled with the disadvantaged, the unemployed, the dispossessed and minorities.Prisons facilities in Kenya are designed to cater for about 19,000 prisoners but by September last year, there were over 41,000 prisoners. Nairobi Remand Prison was holding more than 2,500 inmates instead of 575, Langata Women's Prison, which operates as both a medium and maximum security facility, had 388 persons instead of 336. Worse still is the fact that many women prisoners are accompanied by their children. It is these kind of people that chaplains serve. “At the same time the spiritual welfare of the prison ministry that we deal with includes teaching the prisoners and the staff religious hymns, pray with them, and do counselling because you find that some of these prisoners are depressed, they lose hope, some of them are victims of mistaken identity and they get condemned, others get imprisoned for long periods and the bitterness that one is not guilty yet is suffering for offences that he or she never committed is so immense.” Fr. Ndungu says. The chaplains also provide prisoners with spiritual books and encourage them to face life with optimism and hope. In addition, the chaplains visit inmates who are hospitalised and those who are sick in the prison. They also visit the staff and their families. “This special ministry is equally concerned with the spiritual growth and moral contentment of both men and women in the service because many a time people look at the welfare of the prisoners but rarely do they look at the welfare of the officers who are working in prisons sometimes under very difficult conditions not forgetting that they have to and keep guard of some prisoners who are radical criminals,” says Fr. Ndungu. He is proud of the harmonious working relationship between the Muslim maalims, Protestant chaplains, inmates and prison officers. “We work with a lot of cooperation to see that the spiritual programmes are conducted effectively and that they meet the requirements of spiritual nourishment of all the workers.” He adds that they consult each other whenever they have to make decisions regarding pertinent issues concerning the ministry. The most disheartening moment is when “former inmates comes back to prison for committing yet another crime. I reflect very deeply about my service and wonder if my service is making any positive impact towards reforming the inmates,” says Fr Ndungu. Clement Njoroge is the Editor of AfricaNews, a monthly internet feature service of news on Africa.
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