Death row convicts double as prisons strain with inmates

The number of prisoners awaiting execution nearly doubled last year according to a new survey released by the government.

Despite a national moratorium on executions, the survey shows the number of prisoners on death sentence jumped from 93 in 2024 to 150 in 2025.

This rise in capital sentencing was recorded despite a drop in overall convictions have dropped.

However, prison population has continued to rise, reaching 60,740 inmates. 

The survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics that was released on Wednesday shows that 136 men and 14 women are on death row.

This comes amid a shrinking police force and a prison system in which four out of every ten inmates have not been convicted of any crime.

Kenya has not carried out an execution since 1987, a period during which successive presidents commuted death sentences to life imprisonment. 

Yet courts have continued to hand down the mandatory death penalty for murder and armed robbery.

The survey’s data suggests that the pace of such sentencing is accelerating rather than abating. 

The death row figures are part of a wider crisis of detention. The daily average prison population rose to 60,740 in 2025, and 40.3 per cent of those inmates were unconvicted remand prisoners.

The survey shows141,971 individuals were committed to prison while awaiting trial, a slight decline from the previous year, although the daily stock of remand detainees grew, meaning that people are spending longer behind bars without a judicial determination of their guilt.

 Article 49 of the constitution requires that an arrested person be brought before a court “as soon as is reasonably practicable,” while Article 50 guarantees the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. The survey’s data suggests that for tens of thousands, that promise remains hollow.

The data underscores a deepening crisis in the administration of justice, where the constitutional right to a fair trial and the prohibition of cruel or inhuman treatment are increasingly under threat.

Making matters worse, the prison service itself is shrinking with the number of prison officers declining by 1.8 per cent to 29,998.

Although the survey reports an improved officer-to-inmate ratio of 1:6, the absolute decline in staff raises questions about the quality of custody.

At the same time, the number of probation officers dropped by a tenth, weakening the one mechanism capable of diverting petty offenders from overcrowded prisons.

A parallel concern involves the national police service where the total number of officers declined by 2.3 per cent to 101,650, pushing the police-to-population ratio to 1:525.

This trend moves Kenya further away from the United Nations’ recommended ratio of 1:450, suggesting a service that is overstretched and potentially less capable of maintaining oversight.

The the survey notes that offences involving police officers dropped by 12.2 per cent to 216 reported cases, but human rights organisations have long argued that police misconduct, including enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, is systematically undercounted. 

While the government has managed to marginally reduce the number of crimes reported to the police—from 88,416 in 2024 to 87,208 in 2025—the increasing number of death row convicts and remand populations suggests that the "back-end" of the justice system is failing to keep pace with the "front-end" of law enforcement.