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Kenya Prisons offers unique Valentine’s gift option

By Nyaboga Kiage February 12th, 2023 2 min read

The Kenya Prisons Department has offered an interesting option for ladies during this Valentine’s period.

Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14.

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Showrooms at Prisons Headquarters. PHOTO| COURTESY

On this day, people usually send messages of love and affection to partners, family, and friends.

This day, couples send Valentine’s cards and flowers and spend time together to honor their love for each other.

In line with that, The Kenya Prisons Department has proposed an alternative to traditional Valentine’s Day gifts, such as flowers and cards, by offering furniture made by carpenters in prisons across the country.

The department made this suggestion in a poster shared on its official social media platforms.

“Go beyond the flowers this valentine! Surprise your loved one!” part of the post reads.

Some available items include; seven seater box sofa with a glass-top coffee table whose prices start at Sh350,000 and day beds starting from Sh45,000.

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Showrooms at Prisons Headquarters. PHOTO| COURTESY

The government department asked Kenyans to reach them through contact number 0723339162 or 2722900 or send an email to DEnterprises@prisons.go.ke or as well visit Magereza House in Nairobi County.

The Kenya Prisons Service is tasked with several key responsibilities, outlined in the Prisons and Borstal Acts of the Laws of Kenya.

These include ensuring the safe containment of offenders, facilitating their rehabilitation and reformation through various training, counseling, and educational programs, producing offenders to courts for the administration of justice, controlling and training young offenders, and recruiting and training prison personnel.

The core functions of the Kenya Prisons Service can be summarized as ensuring the safe custody of all prisoners, promoting their rehabilitation and social re-integration, facilitating the administration of justice, and providing care for children aged 4 and below who accompany their mothers to prison.

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This comes at a time when Correctional Service Principal Secretary Mary Muthoni said that women who have children and have shown that they are changed should be considered when it comes to releasing prisoners who are yet to clear their sentences.

She said that intimacy for female inmates is not a priority. The welfare of their children is.

“We should focus more on that child who is not a criminal and has not committed any crime. Wamama wanaeza jipanga (Women can take care of themselves),” Muthoni said.

She spoke after visiting the Shimo la Tewa Maximum security prison in Mombasa.

Since 2014, there has been clamour by, especially by female inmates, supported by various organisations, to be allowed to enjoy their conjugal rights.

Female prisoners in Kenya are calling for a change in laws that prevent them from enjoying sexual intimacy with their spouses when they visit them in jail.

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