The Socio-Economic Demographic and Welfare of Prisoners

This is one of three short papers drawn from the longer report ‘Living With a Death Sentence in Kenya: Prisoners’ Experiences of Crime, Punishment and Death Row’. It is based on structured interviews conducted by our colleagues from the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights with a statistically significant sample of 671 prisoners (of whom 33 were women) sentenced to death in Kenya for murder (44% of the total) and robbery with violence (56%). Just over a quarter of the total sample have had their sentences commuted to life. The sample is large, covers the whole of Kenya, and is representative of all prisoners sentenced to death in the country.

View or download the full report here.