Poverty and Crime

Poverty here is used to describe the situation where it is not possible to attain a particular standard of living considered to be the minimum acceptance in the society.

Participatory poverty assessments have expanded and deepened the understanding of poverty defining it as complex, multidimensional and geographic specific. When people lack productive tools at societal level and individuals find their physical, emotional, psychological and intellectual growth impaired, and deprived of opportunities for elementary functioning and personal fulfillment, they are poor. In a typical African/Kenyan community, poverty is the absence of very basic necessities of life: a condition of life characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, high infant mortality, low life expectancy squalid surroundings and crime.

This is an implication of a life below human decency where an alternative to minimum levels necessary for survival and physical efficiency is often crime.

Sub-Saharan African harbors one of the world's highest rates of poverty and joblessness.

Employment opportunities are few or non-existent causing high rates of unemployment and crime.

Crime is rampant in Kenya and most of the commonly committed offences are poverty related. It is therefore very common that most offenders end up in prison after being pushed by poverty to lead to life patterns that result in crime most of which are petty e.g. loitering, vagabond, brewing, selling and/or consumption of the local brews or just trumped up charges. Most coping mechanisms of the poor such as brewing, hawking and selling of local brews are crimes.

Poor offenders lack money to hire Advocates or pay fines (usually meager amounts) hence they end up in prison. The irony here is that real criminals who have ruined our Social-economic well being are well up and therefore able to hire legal redress services, pay fines or worst, bribe their way out. As one prison officer once said "I really sympathize with many of these prisoners who fill up our penal institutions, they are so poor that, keeping them here will just harden them while the actual crooks never end up here"

RODI has formulated a universal approach and a strategy to help make life more attractive to prisoners, ex prisoners and community around ex prisoners using available resources.

This is mainly through provision of opportunities for income generation through Sustainable Agriculture (SA) and Appropriate Technology (AT).

These stakeholders use the skills required for income generation and as an intervention to reduce poverty-related crimes by community members. This has been found to work.