Finding the link between jail-terms and court fines
By MUNGAI KIHANYA
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
01 July 2018
Last month, the anti-corruption court found a Huduma
Centre employee guilty of taking a S2,500 bribe and ordered her to pay a
fine of Sh500,000 or spend two years in prison. This case was concluded
at around the same time that news of the second National Youth Service
(NYS) scandal was breaking out.
Several readers wrote to me suggesting that if the
lady accused of stealing Sh50 million from the NYS is found guilty, she
should be sentenced in equal proportion to the Huduma Centre employee.
That is, if extorting Sh2,500 from the public will earn you a Sh500,000
fine (200 times the bribe), then stealing Sh60 million should get you a
Sh12 billion fine (200 times the loot)!
Furthermore, is extorting Sh2,500 earns you a
two-year jail term (one year for every Sh1,250), then if you steal Sh50
million you should be jailed for 48,000 years.
Well, while the public anger about the level of
looting in government is understandable, the law doesn’t work so
mathematically. The punishment for stealing is not dependent on the
value of the property stolen. Stealing is stealing: period. In addition,
judges and magistrates have to consider mitigating circumstances when
meting out sentences.
Nevertheless, I have also noted some inconsistencies
in some sentences. In the so-called “cemetery land scandal”, Sammy Kirui
and John Gakuo were found guilty of failing to comply with procurement
laws and were both jailed for three years and ordered to pay a fine of
Sh1 million. They will serve one additional year in jail if they can’t
pay the fine.
Their co-accused, Mary Ng’ethe and Alexander Musee
were found guilty of knowingly giving false information and were jailed
for three years and ordered to pay fines of Sh52 million and Sh32
million respectively. They will also serve one additional year in jail
if they can’t raise the fines.
In the Kirui/Gakuo case, the Sh1 million fine is
equated to one year in jail, while in the Nge’the/Musee case Sh52
million and Sh32million fines are also converted to a one year
jail-term.
The written law is also not any better. The Traffic
Act is one that many people interact with on a daily basis – whether you
are driving or riding in a matatu/bus or even walk.
The first penalty prescribed in this law appears in
section 5(D): if you hack into the vehicle registry you will be jailed
for two years or pay a fine of Sh400,000. The second one is in section
5(E): if you falsify the records in the vehicle registry, you will be
jailed for three years or pay a fine of Sh800,000.
Now this is a clear inconsistency: In 5(D), one year
in jail is equated to Sh200,000 while in 5(E) it is equivalent to
Sh266,667. Yet these two offences are related – they are concerned with
unauthorised access to the vehicle registry.
Perhaps we should revise all our laws to introduce a
jail-term to fine conversion formula…and
it doesn’t have to be direct proportions.
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