Launch of new report on the death penalty in Kenya

On 14 June 2022, the Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), together with its partners The Death Penalty Project (The DPP) and Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), formally launched a new two-part research report on attitudes to capital punishment in Kenya, at a launch event held in Nairobi.

The two-part report, titled The Death Penalty in Kenya: A Punishment that has Died Out in Practice, presents findings on public opinion (written by Professor Carolyn Hoyle, with the assistance of Dr Diana Batchelor) that are based on a representative random sample of 1,672 members of the public, and the views of opinion formers (written by Professor Carolyn Hoyle and Dr Lucy Harry) based on interviews conducted with 42 opinion leaders – people considered influential in shaping, or in responding to, public opinion from across Kenya.

The research found that the vast majority of opinion formers (90%) were in favour of abolishing the death penalty, while among the public only a narrow majority of 51% supported retention, with only 32% of the public ‘strongly in favour’ of retention. 75% of opinion formers believed that the public would accept abolition if it became government policy.

The report’s findings received positive coverage from a wide range of Kenyan media outlets, including: The Daily Nation, The Standard, The Star, Capital FM, People Daily (see p2) and K24. The Star newspaper also published an editorial supporting abolition of the death penalty, along with two op-ed articles co-authored by Carolyn Hoyle and Parvais Jabbar (here and here). The report’s findings were also featured in a KTN TV news segment, which is available to watch on YouTube.

For an overview of the findings of the report, see this article on the DPRU Blog. Both parts of the report are available to read in full on The DPP website here.