Abstract:
Reducing the rate of crime is now a real major factor in the country. This has led to the issue of deprivation of freedom through imprisonment of the offenders to curb this increasing rate and rehabilitate the offenders. Even with more and more offenders being imprisoned the effective rehabilitation is not taking place and this has resulted into prisons becoming congested everyday mostly with petty offenders. There is now International consensus that imprisonment does not necessarily reduce the rate of crime. On the contrary it has been shown that persons sent to prison are more likely to reoffend than those punished in other ways. This study therefore aimed to investigate the various challenges facing effective implementation of Community Service Orders (CSO) in Kenya. Specifically the objectives of the study were to investigate: the impact of Management policy, resource allocation, attitudes of beneficiaries and the manpower capacity in the implementation of CSO.The hypothesis this study tested the relationship between: Management policy, resources allocation and success of CSO. The study adopted a survey design. The population of the study was 59. Stratified sampling was used to categorize this population into 3 stratas comprising of magistrates, CS Officers and CS Supervisors. A census sample of the entire population was used to obtain data by use of a structured questionnaire containing both closed and open ended questions. T-test was used to analyze data. SPSS was also be used to subject the data to appropriate statistical analysis. The study explore areas where policy measures on CSO can be fostered towards improvement and also coming up with strategies to be used by stakeholders.
