- Leaders of the Legio Maria Church have disagreed with the move of Chief Justice to impose on rehabilitation as a means of prostitution punishment
- According to them, the proposed Bill to the National Assembly will completely destroy the moral conducts of the society
- This is follows after the Chief Justice proposed amendments on the law stating that prostitution will remain an offence however not publishable
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Legio Maria oppose Chief Justice Bill
Leaders of the Legio Maria Church have strongly opposed Chief Justice, Martha Koome for proposing Rehabilitation as a means of punishment for prostitution.
According to the leaders, the sloppy rehabilitation punishment will only bring moral decrease in the society.
This follows after the Chief Justice presented a bill to the National Assembly proposing that the participants of prostitution should not be faced with jail term punishments.
Entailments of the proposed Bill
The Penal Code Amendment Bill 2023 presented by the National Council on the Administration of Justice (NCAJ) through the National Committee on Criminal Justice Reforms (NCCJR), seeks to have the deletion of section 153, 154 and amending the principal Act.
Chief Justice Martha Koome and her counterpart court judge Grace Ngenye submitted the draft Bill for consideration to the National Assembly Speaker, Moses Wetangula during a meeting on the 19th of October 2023.
According to the Bill, prostitution will remain an offence. But now punishable through imprisonment but through the use of alternative modes of handling petty offences which include issuance of verbal sanctions, conditional discharge, probation, community service and attending rehabilitation centers.
The Bill states that, where a male person is proved to live with or to be habitually in the company of a prostitute or is proved to have exercised control over the movements of a prostitute in such a manner as to show that he is aiding her prostitution with any other person, he shall, unless he satisfies the court to the contrary, be deemed to be knowingly living on the earnings of prostitution.
Section 154 declares that women practicing in the acts, and have been proven to engage in prostitution in court, are guilty of a felony.
Section 155 also tackles the places used for prostitution which allows the arrest and search warrant of the house of a suspected individual engaging in prostitution or abetting the same.
The Bill continues to state that, if it is made to appear to a magistrate by information on oath that there is reason to suspect that any house or any part of a house is used by a woman or girl for the purposes of prostitution and that any person living in or frequenting the house is living wholly or in part on the earnings of the prostitute, or is exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of the prostitute, the magistrate may issue a warrant authorizing any police officer to enter and search the house and to arrest such person.
In addition, the Bill seeks to amend the Penal Code to protect intersex people who are involved in the criminal justice system.
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