INTERVENTION, TREATMENT AND SUPPORT TAILORED TO
OFFENDERS’ INDIVIDUAL NEEDS IN KENYA
Lilian Akinyi Otieno *The United Nations posits that no crime prevention strategy is complete without
effective measures to address the problem of recidivism. For that reason, effective social
integration or reintegration programmes are essential means of preventing reoffending
and increasing public safety, two very important social policy objectives in all countries.
Reoffending is defined as a person's continued criminal behaviour after receiving some
sanctions or undergoing intervention for a previous crime. Reoffending is one of theserious problems faced by developing countries all over the world. Social inclusion refers
to provisions of qualities (requirements) and opportunities of life in the mainstream(normal) life.
I. EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF OFFENDERS IN COMMUNITY-BASEDTREATEMENT
According to Probation and Aftercare Service Kenya, assessment of offenders is theprocess where a probation officer evaluates a person to inform decision-making. It
involves taking into account myriad factors that surround a person and weighing them todetermine their risks or needs. Probation officers carry out assessment when preparing
Bail Information Reports, Probation Officer’s Reports, Community Service Orders
Report, Power of Mercy Pre-release Reports, Victim Impact Assessment Reports andEnvironmental Adjustments Reports. They also conduct assessment to guide insupervision, rehabilitation and resettlement processes. Probation officers evaluate accused
persons, offenders and ex-offenders.
Effective assessment of offenders is fundamental to achieving prevention of
reoffending and fostering social inclusion. It is a prerequisite to community-based
treatment of offenders with a view to preventing reoffending, promoting social
acceptance and incorporation of offenders under supervision in social engagements withsupport for perceiving a sense of value and importance among community members. It
helps in identification of the offender’s individual risks and needs and the social
environment presenting their risks and protective factors for their social reintegration.
Assessment should be conducted carefully with regard to male, female, youth andjuvenile offenders. Consequently, appropriate tools should be designed and applied to therelevant offender. Risk factors are those characteristics that increase the likelihood that aperson will engage in offending behaviour. On the contrary, protective factors are thosethat decrease the likelihood of engaging in offending behaviour.

*

Senior Probation Officer, Field Services, Probation and Aftercare Service, Kenya.

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A. Current Situation and Practical Challenges in Community-based Treatment of
Offenders in Kenya
1. Current Situation
Information gathering done by probation officers for pre-sentence, resentencing andpre-release reports for courts, penal institutions and the Power of Mercy Committee is toguide decision-making and the suitability of the offender to be considered for communitybased treatment and supervision. These reports are compiled from interviewing theoffender and victims (primary and secondary victims), and a detailed social inquiry
involving the offender’s family, community members and significant others is conducted.
Also, penal institution authorities for adults in prisons and juveniles in Borstal Institutions
are interviewed to establish the inmate’s conduct, skills acquired for reintegration andlevel of risk reduction based on the custodial rehabilitation programmes administered. For
juveniles and youth offenders, the risk and needs assessment tool utilized wasdisseminated during the Swedish Prison and Probation training conducted in the year
2016. It is administered separately, and information gathering is done with the content of
the tool in mind since it informs the probation officer’s report in which the intervention
strategies must be indicated. For male and female adult offenders, a different tool is used
and filled upon placement of an offender on a non-custodial sentence using theinformation in the report to determine the level of risk and needs for supervision purposesand designing the offender’s Individual Treatment Plan (ITP) and Individual Supervision
Plan (ISP). Nevertheless, assessment is noted sometimes to be challenged since, during
quality assurance caseload inspection, some ITPs do not adequately address thecriminogenic needs of the offender. Also, the notes recorded during appointment sessions
at times do not significantly reflect the implementation of the ITP, thus posing a concern
over the knowledge, skills and attitudes of probation officers in conducting effective
assessment. Nevertheless, in practice, some probation officers diligently journey with theoffenders and do commendable work which might not be comprehensively andsystematically recorded as concerns intervention, treatment and support to each offenderas per the risks and needs. This is attributed to the many functions probation officers
undertake, as stated above, about generation of advisory reports for dispensation of justiceand decision-making by courts and penal institutions in addition to supervision ofprobation orders, Community Service Orders (CSO), aftercare supervisees, effecting
victim support and welfare programmes, conducting family conferencing, offenders’home visits, CSO work centre visits, initiating projects and monitoring progress, reporting
offenders’ progress in review of case conferences and case committees, review of ITPs
and ISPs, monthly and quarterly returns submission and many more. In reality despite thechallenges of offender assessment tool utilization, probation officers do much inadministering treatment programmes to offenders based on strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis they conduct from the initial face-to-faceinterview with the offender, community and home visit social inquiry and uponplacement of the offender on a non-custodial supervised sentence, probation orcommunity service orders and aftercare supervision for rehabilitation, resettlement andreintegration.
While working with the offenders based on risk and needs orientation, intervention,
treatment and support tailored to prevent reoffending include but are not limited to thefollowing: offering counselling and guidance (a basic counselling course is mandatory forprobation officers in this regard) though not all have been trained due to limited funds.
Helping juvenile offenders get back to school for formal education, vocational training ofinterest like hair dressing and beauty, tailoring and dressmaking, mechanics, welding,126

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carpentry, masonry, cooking among others through regular training or encouraging theoffenders to seek apprenticeships based on whichever is convenient. The Probation andAftercare Department has hostels for temporary accommodation of offenders and offerssome of such skills empowerment. They are Nakuru Girls and Siaya Female Probation
Hostel, Shanzu and Kimumu Junior for young juveniles and the Nairobi Probation Hostel
for the youths. As field stations, we utilize the hostels by sending clients there for formal
education and skills empowerment as the hostile home environment gets harmonized.
Day care centres are as well in place to address needs for skills acquisition by theoffenders. In the month of June 2019, the AthiRiver Station obtained information on
Kenya Youth Employment Opportunities (KYEOP), a programme funded by the WorldBank to empower the youths aged between eighteen to twenty-nine years with skill andsupport for entrepreneurship. Application was online and on very short notice. Nine youth
offenders were supported at the office by a probation officer to access the Internet using
office resources and applied for the course. Probation open day is an event we hold atleast once in a year and provide free atmosphere for our clients on community-based
treatment including willing victims and relatives to interact and share experience on theirrehabilitation, resettlement and reintegration process. As a measure for youth
empowerment with ideas, during the open day held on 29 May 2019 AthiRiver Sub
County Youth Officer was invited and he sensitized the youth on the available support
programmes for the youth in his department including the latest one (KYEOP). In one
case, an offender who lacked basic literacy and wished to know how to read was assisted
and referred to the AthiRiver Adult Education Department for help. One of our casecommittee members, Bishop Doctor Nicholas Muli, accepted a male offender who had
been involved in bhang smoking in his church. He identified the offender’s ability to play
the keyboard; hence, he allowed him to play the church keyboard as he continued helping
him reform and stop reoffending. The bishop informed the probation office about theoffender’s progress. After some time, he reformed, shaped up and announced his wedding
after meeting a woman he fell in love with. He completed his probation sentence as a
success story of preventing reoffending and fostering social inclusion. These are someexamples of the ways of fostering social inclusion; enabling offenders to participate insocial or group activities to feel accepted, valued and important as any other person in thecommunity, thereby preventing reoffending.
A challenging case involved a female offender, aged thirty-four years, who was arepeat offender and was tagged as a notorious dealer in illicit liquor. She was proud anddefied authority. She could not comply with non-custodial orders due to her lust for quickmoney. She had been arrested twice, and she paid a fine in 2016. In 2018, she wasarrested again for a similar offence and was placed on CSO. She repeated the offence, anddue to community outcry against her conduct, the CSO was revoked and she was
imprisoned. After five months, she was considered for a pre-release report due to a prison
decongestion exercise. Her family members were involved in the family conference with
her in prison, and she promised to change her behaviour and venture into the hotelbusiness after release, which her father was ready to support, instead of illicit liquor. The
court placed her on three months for the period that had remained. She served a CSO for
five days and reoffended again. She was arrested with illicit liquor and arraigned in courtwith a fresh charge. Consideration made based on the Bangkok Rules 1 could not save her
this time as the community was tired of her and had no more interest in her case. Due to1

United Nation Rules for Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women
Offenders (Bangkok Rules).

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her pride and disrespect, she was left to face the law, the community withdrew fromparticipating in her issues leading to incarceration for one year without the option of
paying a fine. In the course of time, her son dropped out from class eight as a candidate
and disappeared from home. Her alcoholic husband could not maintain the home. It was alesson that community participation and social inclusion in prevention of reoffending
depends on the character of the offender.
2. Practical Challenges
Practical challenges are immense, starting from the point of recruitment. Probation
officers are drawn from the faculty of social sciences with diverse backgrounds. The
induction course that provides a platform for building a uniform base for probation work
is usually done within a short period of one week (five days) for newly employedprobation officers. This is barely sufficient for them to understand and apply
comprehensively all aspects of rehabilitation. Hence, there is great reliance on on-the-job
training after posting to various stations. This requires that the experienced officer
training them should be adequately knowledgeable and skilled and have a positive
perspective on sharing knowledge and skill. Inadequate funding by the Government fortrainings is a hindrance to properly equipping the officers with the needed knowledge andskills.
The Probation and Aftercare Service has not developed a standardized psychosocial
offender assessment tool for use by all probation officers. The process is still underway,
and in the recent past, some stations, especially within Nairobi capital city and its
environs, have benefited from the Swedish Prison and Probation Service training on
offender assessment and classification tool, but the same has not been rolled out. Hence, amajority of probation officers countrywide are still handling offenders on the basis of thepreviously introduced tool which has gaps, hence trial and error in offender assessment.
Few probation officers had been trained on a different tool for assessment of juvenile andyouth offenders aged twenty-five years and below. The few shared the skills and trained
their fellows within the selected pilot stations on the tool and are applying the same, likethe AthiRiver Station. Many probation officers are not aware about the existence of sucha tool. The emerging issue of juvenile and youth radicalization is a serious concern in
Kenya that requires careful assessment and relevant treatment of those entrapped in thecriminal justice system. As concerns the assessment of women offenders, there is no
separate assessment tool in place relevant to their unique issues, but the one used for adultmale offenders is applied for women. Therefore, a gap exists in matching thecriminogenic needs with the right interventions and treatment. Hence sometimes like themedical analogy our situation is like a wrong diagnosis, wrong prescription leading tofailed treatment.
Relapse and reoffending by Alcohol and Drug Abuse (ADA) offenders are serious
problems all over the country. For referral, there is only one Government facility forinstitutionalized treatment of such offenders at a subsidized cost, that is, Mathari Mental
Hospital Drug Rehabilitation Unit, but a majority of the offenders cannot afford treatment
there due to poverty. The Probation and Aftercare Department lacks its own facilities for
non-custodial offenders. Another challenge is the lack of skills in handling psychiatricoffenders released under Presidential Pardon and referred for supervision by probation
officers. This special category requires adequate psychosocial assessment knowledge andskills.

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Commercial sex workers on community-based treatment present challenges sincemost of them do not want their nature of work to be disclosed to their family members forfear of shame and rejection. In the recent cases handled at AthiRiver Station, some ofthem are married and pleaded with the probation officer to keep secret and not even
disclose to their husbands that they are a serving probation sentence; one refused to carryher probation order home so that her husband would not see it, but she promised tocomply with attending appointments with her supervising officer.
During information gathering through social inquiry and conducting the initialassessment, the finding of risk and needs level and the identified intervention strategies
are given in the report. However, probation officers encounter a number of challenges.
These include the following: false information given by some offenders, the offender’srelatives hiding vital information, at times community members decline to giveinformation fearing that they may be called upon as a witness in court since they do notunderstand the difference between a probation officer and a prosecutor. Also, some fearthat the offender may know that they gave negative information about him, and he may
harm them when released. Corruption is a serious problem that influences some probation
officers to deal dishonestly by submitting either favourable or unfavourable reports forthe offender’s release back to the community. Limited resources, inadequate funding andtransport challenges for conducting home visits and community social inquiry coupledwith vast distance from the probation office to some of the homes and, in some instances,the court gives a short period for submission of the report leading to shoddy desk work
reports generated through phone calls. Due to bitterness, some victims refuse to beinterviewed, yet some may have relationships with the offender, a factor that contributes
in the treatment plan. In some areas due to lack of awareness about community-based
correctional services, community members recognize imprisonment as the genuine
punishment; hence, they display resistance to non-custodial sentences for communitybased treatment, thinking that it is just a way of setting criminals free, especially when theoffence is habitual or serious in nature. Community hostility and insecurity caused bysome high-risk cases have led to probation officers being attacked and injured in thecourse of social inquiry. All these are impacting negatively on the initial assessment of
the concerned offenders, thus resulting in less effective offender individual treatment
plans that do not meticulously address the risk and criminogenic needs of the offender. A
poor-quality report may result in inappropriate decision-making and a superficial
treatment plan for community-based treatment that does not address the underlying risk
and needs factors; hence, there is little chance of preventing reoffending. As describedearlier, probation officers are few and must handle a very big caseload
Offender assessment is vital. Research from the American Heart Association showsthat a risk-and-protective-factors approach is consistent with a public health model of
disease and prevention and gave an example that children of parents who have heartdisease are more likely to develop it themselves; however, exercise can buffer thecorrelation between family history and heart disease as well as decrease the likelihood ofheart disease without considering the family history. Also, researchers illustrate theimportance of assessment as not only limited to making judgment on reoffending but also
useful for guiding treatment. They explain that, from the assessment of multiple domainsof criminal conduct, dynamic (criminogenic) and static risk factors, offender assessment
can guide the intensity of treatment. Therefore, the risk principle tells us who to treat andhelps in matching the level of service to the level of risk such that it is the higher risk
offender rather than the lower risk offender who receives most of the treatment services.
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Then the need principle tells us what to treat (criminogenic needs). Further, they state that
offender assessment can guide on how we provide treatment, that is the responsivity
principle (tells us how to treat) based on the individual’s learning ability, which isdependent upon a number of personal, cognitive and emotional factors. Hence, it isimportant to use cognitive-behavioural interventions with attention to the personal needsof the offender.
Advancement in research has led to the development of the Fourth Generation Risk
Assessment: The integration of case management with risk/needs assessment. The
assessment is explained as quoted below:
Fourth generation instruments emphasize the link between assessment and casemanagement. This means more than adhering to the risk principle and targeting
criminogenic needs. It acknowledges the role of personal strengths in building a
prosocial orientation, the assessment of special responsivity factor to maximize
the benefits from treatment and the structured monitoring of the case from the
beginning of supervision to the end. Fourth-generation instruments include the
COMPAS, used in parts of the United States and the most researched fourth
generation instrument, the Level of Service/Case management Inventory(LS/CMI: Because of the wealth of research and the instrument’s welldeveloped theoretical base, the LS/CMI is used to illustrate the features of the
fourth-generation assessment. 2
3. Identified Underlying Problem
In view of the current situation in Kenya as explained earlier, probation officers –save probably the few who have been trained through Swedish Prison and Probation
Service – are not tuned to effective utilization of the offender assessment tool to recountits benefits on prevention of reoffending and fostering social inclusion for offender
rehabilitation. Probation officers are few in number, yet they do a lot of work due to lackof specialization. Limited funds for training is another problem. Reaching out to thevillages far from the station is a problem due to transport problems.
4. Possible Solutions to the Underlying Problem
The Probation and Aftercare Service Department needs to train all probation officers
on fourth generation offender risk and needs assessment for utilization for better results inoffender treatment and prevention of reoffending. Conducting benchmarking andexchange programmes with other countries which prosper in reducing reoffending forsharing experiences and good practice is motivating and eye opening as regards offenderassessment and the goal of preventing recidivism. Enhancing resources and funding forprevention of reoffending is necessary. To keep constant supervision of offenders in far
places has been eased through recruitment of volunteer probation officers in AthiRiver inthe month of September 2019. The recruitment process involved holding open public
meetings in the villages and sensitizing people about probation and the CSO noncustodial option for community-based treatment of offenders and social inclusion for
reintegration and resettlement. More efforts are needed to strengthen and work with
community-based structures for effective offender rehabilitation and compliance withcourt orders, for example, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations,

2

Bonta J. & Andrew D.A: The Psychology of Criminal Conduct (New York, 2017: Routledge).

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non-governmental organizations, “Ten household managers (Nyumba kumi)” for keeping
watch over one’s neighbours, social welfare groups, merry-go-rounds, among others.
When a strong social support network is present and the offender is able to fit in well,then with proper assessment, addressing offenders’ criminogenic needs would be easy
and there would be no labelling or discrimination. Issues such as drug and alcohol abuse,family and marital problems, poverty, unemployment, enrolling in school, living in acrime prone area, peer influence, among others would be addressed with social support
and translate into to prevention of reoffending.
Reference
http://www.probation.go.ke/2015-11-07-10-14-45/2015-12-01-12-56-44.html© 2019 Probation and Aftercare Service.

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