PROFILE OF CRIMINAL HOMICIDE

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to find out whether the people in Kenya kill under similar conditions and for similar reasons as people in Uganda or elsewhere where research has been carried out. The major questions raised under this general objective cover a wide range of variables which include the age of offender, and other personal and social variables that are of sociological significance in explaining criminal violent homicides among human beings. The study used the direct interviews of the prisoners. These were all men serving long prison sentences at the Maximum-security Prison at Kamiti situated just outside the Metropolitan city of Nairobi, in Kenya. In all, there were 108 respondents. Some had committed manslaughter and the rest had committed murder and had either been sentenced to death but had been reprieved by the President and the death sentences had been committed to life imprisonment or had committed murder while suffering from mental aberrations and were serving what is known as President’s Pleasure, which means an indefinite prison sentence, and usually such inmates first undergo psychiatric treatment before being allowed to mix with other criminals within the prison community.