Sending errant children to South Africa to be reformed

Remandees at Nakuru Juvenile Remand Home, November 22, 2022. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

The question whether to spare the rod and spoil the child has long bothered policy-makers. And in circumstances where the children defied authority necessitating their locking up in formal institutions, the jailers agonised how to reform the delinquents.

In a bid to reform children, the government carried out an experiment where children who had been convicted and legally held in approved schools were given some half time, away from their "prisons" as an incentive.