Justice Nest
Organization Details
Justice Nest is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring access to justice for vulnerable families and individuals in Kenya. We aim to protect and restore families in contact with the justice system, focusing on women, children, and prisoners. We work to divert mothers and children from the justice system. We also offer legal services to prisoners through prison paralegal program.
Impact Story
The complexity of the justice system is leading to family disintegration and accelerating poverty levels, therefore leaving women and children vulnerable. Offences committed by women are often closely linked to poverty and are frequently a means of survival to support their children and their families.
The overuse and abuse of prosecution and imprisonment of mothers is leading to family disintegration while also contributing to the cycle of generational involvement with the criminal justice system. Children often fall into conflict with the law due to a lack of a safety net at home. In addition to the vulnerabilities that may be associated with their relative developmental immaturity, they are especially vulnerable due to the circumstances that are likely to have precipitated their detention (these include, but are not limited to poverty, trauma, prior victimization, mental health issues, cognitive delay, etc).
Where access to legal representation is concerned, the cost of hiring a lawyer in Kenya is prohibitively high for many prisoners, most of whom come from impoverished backgrounds. This leads to a situation where many accused individuals cannot afford to mount an effective defense. Furthermore, the Kenyan legal system is plagued with delays and inefficiencies that cause cases to drag on for years, thus denying inmates proper legal representation. The backlog of cases exacerbates the problem, causing prisoners wait indefinitely for their day in court. Justice Nest works to divert mothers and children from the justice system by offering them the support they need to stay away from the system. We provide legal services to prisoners through the prison paralegal system ensuring that prisoners understand their case and the legal system and they are able to mount an effetive defence.
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